Harry Smith: Country Music Star

It isn’t just the Grand Ole Opry-playing Bob Schieffer who has the country music chops at CBS News. The Early Show anchor Harry Smith wrote and recorded a country song while the show was in Nashville this week.

Smith tells us he wrote the song in “about 20 minutes or so” on Sunday, went into the studio on Monday with producer Jimmy Nichols and he sang the duet with Sarah Darling, the first artist signed to Nichols new Black River Music label.

And “Red State Blue State Blues” is a hit (it’s a tale of love between a couple on opposite sides of the political spectrum). “We’re starting to hear from radio stations who want to play this thing,” Smith tells TVNewser. “Too funny.” The master will be available for stations by the end of the day today.

The song features a shout out to FNC. “I get my news from Fox,” sings Smith, as an O’Reilly Factor clip plays. “Mine is NPR,” sings Darling.

Besides his musical interests, we asked Smith about politics. “Every time I sit down with Bob Schieffer to talk about the election, debates and polls, we always say we’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Smith. He also commented on his colleague Katie Couric‘s recent interviews with Gov. Sarah Palin. “I thought she did an amazing job,” he said, citing the “millions” who have watched the clips online.

Click continued to see the music video for “Red State Blue State Blues,” and the making-of segment from The Early Show this morning…

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