Danny called me up a moment ago and asked me about the two versions of the song and why Ty never released it as a single. Ty's version was first (1996). As I recall, Gary's version was released sometime in late 1999 (I think around Oct or Nov).
Dan Dugmore played all the steel work on Ty's first album "What Mattered Most" and on our second album, "Living In A Moment" (released in Aug 1996 with "Don't Tell Mama"), the
CD sleeve credits both Paul Franklin and Bruce Bouton as playing steel on the album with Paul being the one who played steel on Ty's version of
Don't Tell Mama. It's one of those CD sleeves that lists the words of each song and the musicians who played on the track.
Something I found interesting is that I just looked up the "Living In A Moment" album on a couple of web sites because my nephew wants to order the Ty album, and on CDuniverse, Amazon (and a couple of others)
they only list Bruce Bouton on steel with no mention of Paul. It makes me wonder if there was a typo on the CD credits. If I get a chance to see Paul at the next Dallas show, I'll have to ask him if he remembers playing on the "Living In A Moment" album, or if it was actually Bruce Bouton that played on all of it.
Although I answered Danny's questions on the phone, I thought I'd go ahead and answer why Ty didn't have
Don't Tell Mama as a single release instead of a filler tune. Ty was signed with Epic who is owned, along with Columbia, by Sony Music. The story came down to us through our road manager that Ty, as well as the Epic representatives, were fully prepared to release
Don't Tell Mama as a single, but the Sony representatives themselves didn't feel that
Don't Tell Mama was "hit material" and allowed it to remain as a filler tune on "Living In A Moment".
Three years later, in 1999, Gary Allen recorded it on his "Smoke Rings In The Dark" album. Doug Stone also recorded the song in 2007 on his "My Turn" album. Dan Dugmore also played steel on the Doug Stone version.