| DATE: 8-27-07 15 Nominated for Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Nashville, Tenn. — Fifteen renowned and award-winning songwriters have been nominated for one of the nation's highest songwriting honors – induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell and Roger Murrah, Chairman of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Foundation and himself a 2005 inductee, announced the nominees today at a press conference and luncheon at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel. The official Hall of Fame Dinner and Induction Ceremony will take place at the hotel on Sunday, October 14. "This is an amazing group of nominees, and every one of them is extremely worthy of induction,” said Murrah. “Songwriters are the creative foundation of the music community,” added Mayor Purcell, “and these incredibly talented writers have brought world-wide notoriety and acclaim to Nashville. For that we extend to them our heartfelt thanks and congratulations.” The slate of nominees, divided into Songwriter and Songwriter/Artist categories, seeks to recognize songwriters whose first significant works achieved commercial success and/or artistic recognition at least 20 years ago and who have “positively impacted and been closely associated with the Nashville music community and deemed to be outstanding and significant.” Two from the Songwriter category and one from the Songwriter/Artist category will be honored with induction on October 14. The 10 nominees in the Songwriter category are: Paul Craft (“Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life” by Moe Bandy), Bob DiPiero (“American Made” by the Oak Ridge Boys), Kye Fleming (“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” by Barbara Mandrell), Larry Henley ("The Wind Beneath My Wings" by Bette Midler), Mac McAnally ("Old Flame" by Alabama), Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery (“We’re Gonna Hold On” by George Jones & Tammy Wynette), Bob Morrison ("You Decorated My Life" by Kenny Rogers), Thom Schuyler (“16th Avenue” by Lacy J. Dalton), L.E. White (“After The Fire Is Gone” by Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn) and Lawton Williams (“Fraulein” by Bobby Helms). The five
nominees in the Songwriter/Artist category are: J.J. Cale
(“Cocaine”), Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs
(“Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’”), Amy
Grant (“Baby Baby”), Tony Joe White
(“Rainy Night In Georgia”) and Hank Williams Jr.
(“All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight”). Established in 1970, the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame boasts 156 members, including songwriting luminaries such as Johnny Cash, Rodney Crowell, Bob Dylan, Don & Phil Everly, Vince Gill, Harlan Howard, Roger Miller, Bill Monroe, Roy Orbison, Dolly Parton, Carl Perkins, Jimmie Rodgers, Cindy Walker, Jimmy Webb and Hank Williams, Sr. The Nashville
Songwriters Hall of Fame Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit foundation
that owns and operates the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. The NaSHOF’s
principal purposes are to educate, archive, celebrate and honor the
legacy of songwriting that is uniquely associated with the Nashville
music community. # # # #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # Memphis-born Paul Craft has a special niche in the Nashville songwriting community. He is one of Music Row’s most prolific providers of songs to the bluegrass world. Among his 200 cuts in that genre are recordings by artists such as Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, The Lewis Family and The Nashville Bluegrass Band. The Osborne Brothers have recorded ten Craft tunes; the Seldom Scene have recorded nine. In addition to creating wickedly humorous fare such as “It’s Me Again, Margaret” (Ray Stevens) and country hits such as “Blue Heartache” (Gail Davies), “Brother Jukebox” (Mark Chesnutt) and “Come As You Were” (T. Graham Brown), Craft is one of only four songwriters to have a pair of solely-written songs nominated for a Best Country Song Grammy® in the same year. He accomplished that feat in 1977 with “Dropkick Me, Jesus” (Bobby Bare) and “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life” (Moe Bandy). Craft’s catalog also contains several titles that have become “standards” recorded by many artists, including “Midnight Flyer,” “Keep Me From Blowing Away” and “Teardrops Will Kiss The Morning Dew.” Youngstown, Ohio, native Bob DiPiero moved to Nashville in 1979 to pursue songwriting and soon signed with Combine Music. His first cut was Reba McEntire’s 1980 hit “I Can See Forever In Your Eyes.” In 1983, his “American Made” by The Oak Ridge Boys became a national ad jingle for Miller Beer. By the mid-’80s his songs were appearing regularly at the top of the charts. In 1995 DiPiero earned a Triple Play award from the CMA for penning three #1 hits in a year, an honor he earned again in 1996. “Wink” (Neal McCoy) was also named BMI Country Song of the Year in 1995, while “Worlds Apart” (Vince Gill) was given a similar accolade at the 1997 Country Radio Music Awards. In 1998 DiPiero was named Songwriter of the Year at the Nashville Music Awards. As a performer, he is noted for the wit and élan of his solo appearances and recordings and was a member of the band Billy Hill from 1989-91. Arkansas native Kye Fleming started writing songs at 14 and spent her early 20’s on the folk music circuit performing original material. In 1977, she signed with Pi Gem Music as a staff writer. She and another young songwriter, Dennis Morgan, started collaborating, and their catalog reads like a country music greatest-hits package of the ’70s and ’80s: “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” and “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool” (Barbara Mandrell), “Smoky Mountain Rain” and “I Wouldn’t Have Missed It For The World” (Ronnie Milsap), as well as BMI’s 1983 Country Song of the Year, “Nobody” (Sylvia). Fleming was NSAI Songwriter of the Year in 1981 and 1982 and BMI Country Songwriter of the Year in 1980, 1982 and 1983. She was also BMI Pop Songwriter of the Year in 1981 and 1982. In 1987, her “Give Me Wings” (Michael Johnson) was named Billboard’s Country Song of the Year. She has been awarded more than 45 BMI awards in her career — 10 of them earning Million-Air status — making her one of the most-awarded songwriters in country music history. Texas native Larry Henley is one of only a handful of Music City composers to have won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year, for “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” performed by Bette Midler and featured in the 1988 film Beaches. Henley has had major success on both the country and pop charts. He first achieved fame in the 1960s pop group The Newbeats. His falsetto was unforgettable on discs like “Bread and Butter” (1964) and “Run Baby Run” (1965). By the 1970s he was forging a second career in Nashville as a songwriter with hits such as “’Til I Get It Right” (Tammy Wynette) and “Lizzie and the Rainman” (Tanya Tucker), followed by “He’s A Heartache (Looking For a Place To Happen)” (Janie Fricke) and “Is It Still Over?” (Randy Travis). In addition to the Grammy, “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” as recorded by Gary Morris, was the ACM’s 1983 Song of the Year and CMA’s 1984 Song of the Year. Henley was NSAI Songwriter of the Year in 1983. Raised in Belmont, Mississippi, Mac McAnally was a guitar and piano prodigy who was performing in clubs by age 13. By age 18, he was a session guitarist in Muscle Shoals. He began his recording career in 1977, and his ten albums have garnered him a loyal cult following. In addition to being a successful musician, singer, arranger, publisher and studio owner, this Southern renaissance man is a major songwriting talent, having provided hits to Alabama (“Old Flame”), Shenandoah (“Two Dozen Roses”), Steve Wariner (“Precious Thing”), Ricky Van Shelton (“Crime Of Passion”) and T.G. Sheppard (“One Owner Heart”), among others. He has produced artists from Ricky Skaggs to Chris LeDoux to Sawyer Brown (for whom he also penned the hits “Café on the Corner,” “All These Years,” “The Boys and Me” and “Thank God For You”). McAnally is a longtime member of Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer band, has produced Buffett records and has co-written Buffett hits such as “It’s My Job” and “License to Chill.” Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery is considered one of the all-time great writers of hard-core honky-tonk material. George Jones selected Montgomery songs for 38 of his singles, including “Four-O-Thirty-Three,” “Small Time Laboring Man,” “Loving You Could Never Be Better” and the classic Jones-Wynette duet, “We’re Gonna Hold On.” Although closely associated with Jones, Montgomery’s songs have been recorded by artists such as Emmylou Harris (“One Of These Days”) and Tanya Tucker (“What’s Your Mama’s Name, Child”), as well as Hank Williams Jr., Dolly Parton, Merle Haggard, Porter Wagoner, Eddy Arnold, Barbara Mandrell, Bobby Bare, and Earl’s sister, Melba Montgomery. Earl’s songs have appeared in films such as The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia, Stand By Your Man, Give Me Shelter, Concrete Cowboy and Cowboys Don’t Cry. For a number of years, Montgomery was a successful studio musician in Muscle Shoals. His guitar work can be heard on hits such as “You Better Move On” by Arthur Alexander, “Hooked On Music” by Mac Davis and “Everybody” by Tommy Roe. In addition, he toured as a member of the backing band for Hollywood star Michael Landon. Also noted for creating Gospel material, Montgomery has been a minister since 1980 and pastors the Oakwood Baptist Church in Sheffield, Alabama. After graduating from Mississippi State University in 1965 with a degree in nuclear engineering, Biloxi native Bob Morrison decided to abandon that career path to pursue music. He moved to Nashville in 1973, signed with Combine Music and was having his songs recorded regularly a year later. In 1980, Morrison won a Best Country Song Grammy for “You Decorated My Life” (Kenny Rogers). That was also the year of Urban Cowboy, for which Morrison wrote the theme song, “Lookin’ For Love” (Johnny Lee), and the love theme, “Love The World Away,” also sung by Rogers. Morrison provided songs for Reba McEntire’s career-launching albums, including “(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven,” the future superstar’s first top-10 hit. Other catalog highlights include “You’re The One” (The Oak Ridge Boys), “The Love She Found in Me” (Gary Morris), “Shine On” (George Jones), “Don’t Call Him a Cowboy” (Conway Twitty), “Whiskey, If You Were a Woman” (Highway 101) and “Tonight the Heartache’s On Me” (Dixie Chicks). Morrison was ASCAP’s Country Songwriter of the Year in 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1982. He was NSAI Songwriter of the Year in 1980. Thom Schuyler has worn many hats during his Nashville career. The Pennsylvania native has been an A&R executive at RCA, an industry leader on the boards of both NARAS and CMA, a solo recording artist for Capitol Records and a member of the MTM Records trios S-K-O (Schuyler, Knobloch & Overstreet) and S-K-B (Schuyler, Knobloch & Bickhardt). He is often credited as a founder of Nashville’s popular “in the round” style of songwriter showcases. Schuyler’s “Love Will Turn You Around” was ASCAP Country Song of the Year in 1982. Other chart-toppers include “I Fell in Love Again Last Night” (The Forester Sisters), “Years After You” (John Conlee), “Long Line of Love” (Michael Martin Murphey) and “Love Out Loud” (Earl Thomas Conley). His “Point of Light” was the theme song of President George H.W. Bush’s volunteerism campaign, while “16th Avenue” is the unofficial anthem of Music Row’s songwriting community. East Tennessee native L.E. White first rose to prominence as the fiddler in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in the 1950s. He then joined Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper’s Clinch Mountain Clan as a guitarist and harmony singer in the 1960s. As a songwriter, White had more than 200 cuts – 70 of them by Conway Twitty, for whom White worked for 15 years as manager of the star’s publishing companies. White’s Twitty classics include “I Love You More Today,” “To See My Angel Cry” and “I’m Not Through Loving You Yet,” as well as the Twitty-Loretta Lynn duet “After the Fire is Gone,” which won the team a Grammy Award in 1974. White and Carol Lee Cooper sang harmony on many Twitty records. He and collaborator Lola Jean Dillon were signed as a duo by Epic Records and recorded “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” in 1977. The following year, Conway and Loretta successfully revived the tune. Other White songs include “We’ve Come a Long Way Baby” (Loretta Lynn), “Everyday Family Man” (Jimmy Dickens) and “Be Proud of Your Man” (Porter Wagoner). White died Sept. 7, 2004, at age 74. Lawton
Williams was born in Tennessee and raised in Kentucky. In 1951,
he relocated to Ft. Worth, Texas, as a radio broadcaster and bandleader.
He was the producer, host and a performer on KRLD’s Big D Jamboree
in the 1950s. He also recorded extensively for labels such as Mercury,
Decca, King, Allstar, D, Groove, Mega, LeBill, Plantation and most notably,
RCA. But it is as a songwriter that he truly shines. In 1957, Bobby
Helms recorded Williams’ “Fraulein.” It remained on
the country charts for 52 consecutive weeks, a feat no single has matched
since. It is now a standard, having been recorded by more than 50 other
artists. His second major hit of 1957 was Hank Locklin’s version
of “Geisha Girl.” Williams also wrote the “answer”
songs to those hits: “I’ll Always Be Your Fraulein”
(Kitty Wells) and “Lost to a Geisha Girl” (Skeeter Davis).
In 1961, Jimmy Dickens recorded Williams’ masterpiece, “Farewell
Party,” which Gene Watson later made his signature song in 1979.
It has since been revived by both Alan Jackson and Joe Nichols. The
Williams classic “Shame On Me” launched the chart career
of Bobby Bare in 1962 and was a hit for Donna Fargo in 1977. Williams
died July 26, 2007, at age 85. ********************** 2007
Nominees for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame - Famed for his bluesy, rootsy, laid-back style, J.J. Cale was born in Oklahoma City. He moved to Nashville from Tulsa in 1959 and was hired as a guitarist by touring Grand Ole Opry troupes. After a stint in Los Angeles and a return to Tulsa, he traveled back to Nashville in 1970 to record his debut album. In 1972, he built his own studio in Music City, and he continued to record and live part-time in Nashville throughout the 1970s and early ‘80s. Both Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler have acknowledged Cale’s influence as a guitarist, and the former has made international hits of such Cale compositions as “After Midnight” and “Cocaine.” Various Cale albums over the years have also given us “Crazy Mama” and “Call Me the Breeze,” which was turned into a rock standard by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Cale’s “Clyde” became a top-10 country hit for Waylon Jennings in 1980. Cale continues to record and tour and has had a long musical association with Nashville’s Leon Russell. Tennessee native Lester Flatt first hooked up with North Carolina native Earl Scruggs as part of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys in 1945. Three years later, they left Monroe to start their own act. In 1953, Flatt & Scruggs began their WSM radio show for Martha White Flour, then joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1956. Well-known in bluegrass and country circles, Flatt & Scruggs became the first country group to be booked on the folk music circuit. The duo gained worldwide recognition in 1962 when they recorded the theme song to The Beverly Hillbillies TV show. Although they did not write the song, it hit #1 within five weeks of the show’s first broadcast. In 1967, Earl’s instrumental “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” was used in the film Bonnie & Clyde. That song earned the duo a performance Grammy and went on to achieve Million-Air status from BMI. Throughout their career, Flatt & Scruggs wrote many of their popular songs, including “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’,” “Crying My Heart Out Over You,” “Flint Hill Special” and “Cabin in the Hills.” Though they disbanded in 1969, they each were inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Honor and, in 1985, became only the second bluegrass act to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Elected to the GMA Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2003, Amy Grant has sold more records than any other Contemporary Christian singer. Signed to a recording contract at age 16, her first LP, issued in 1977, contained six solo compositions. Her 1982 breakthrough album, Age to Age, earned a Grammy and two Dove Awards and was the first platinum-selling Christian music album. Her 1983 holiday album contained her co-written “Tennessee Christmas,” which is now a seasonal standard. “Find A Way” (1985) and “Lead Me On” are Christian music evergreens. She also co-wrote her hit pop crossover songs of 1991-92 – “Baby Baby,” “Every Heartbeat,” “Good For Me,” “I Will Remember You” and “That’s What Love Is For.” All of these are on Heart in Motion, which has sold five million units and is CCM’s top selling album of all time. Another song from this era, “Place in This World,” was named the GMA’s 1991 Song of the Year. In 2005, Grant starred in the reality TV series Three Wishes and won her sixth Grammy Award. In 2006, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One of the musical world’s great minimalists, Tony Joe White needs nothing more than his “whomper stomper” guitar and swampy baritone voice to mesmerize listeners. Discovered by Nashville’s Bob Beckham, the Louisiana native initially gained popularity in France, but 1969’s “Polk Salad Annie” made White an American star, as well. Dusty Springfield popularized his song “Willie and Laura Mae Jones,” and Elvis Presley had a big hit with “I’ve Got a Thing About You Baby.” White collaborated with Tina Turner on her 1989 album Foreign Affair, which featured her singing his “Steamy Windows.” The ballad “Rainy Night in Georgia,” which he wrote and originated, has now been recorded by more than 100 artists, including Brook Benton, who took it to the top of the charts in 1970. White is one of the few pop writer/artists who has based his career in Nashville. He was the subject of two 1998 film documentaries in Europe, and his 2004 comeback CD was nominated for an Americana Music Association award.
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