![]() Dillon recorded two albums with labelmate Gary Stewart, a hard-living honky-tonk singer ten years his senior. His RCA singles “What Good Is a Heart” and “Nobody in His Right Mind (Would’ve Left Her)” also reached the Top Thirty. That sounds good, that’s your name.’”ĭillon plunged wholeheartedly into country music in the 1980s, building his career as an artist-frequently recording and touring-while writing hits for other country artists. “He opened up the phone book and said, ‘We’ve got to have something with two letters in the middle of it. “I’ll never forget sitting in Jerry’s office,” Dillon said during his Poets and Prophets interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2008. Preparing for the release of that record, RCA executive Jerry Bradley thought his young artist needed a new last name. Music publisher and producer Tom Collins signed him as a writer and placed three Dillon songs on Barbara Mandrell’s 1977 album Lovers, Friends and Strangers.ĭillon’s career breakthrough happened in 1979: as a writer, he gained his first Top Five country hit with “Lying in Love with You,” a duet by Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius as an artist, he signed with RCA Records and released a Top Thirty country radio hit, “I’m into the Bottle (To Get You Out of My Mind).” ![]() Shelby Singleton, owner of the independent label, issued the 45-rpm single under the name “Dean Dalton.” During his first years in Music City, Dillon played the role of Hank Williams in a production at Opryland theme park, giving him experience performing for large crowds. A year later, he released “Las Vegas Girl” on Plantation Records. At sixteen, Dillon made a custom recording (“The River’s Edge”) around the same time, he gained notice in East Tennessee performing on local television programs (including Jim Clayton’s Startime variety show in Knoxville).ĭillon hitchhiked to Nashville at eighteen. ![]() At age fourteen, Dillon received a letter from Johnny Cash, who thanked him for his interest in supplying songs but said he had more songs already than he could record. Dillon especially admired the hard-country lyrics of Merle Haggard and the accessible melodies of James Taylor and Carole King.ĭillon studied the lyrics printed in the magazine Country Song Roundup, and as a teenager he precociously pitched songs to established Nashville stars. By his mid-teens, the youngster realized that he wanted to make songwriting and singing his profession. His stepfather bought him a guitar that same year. In 1962, at age seven, Dillon took his stepfather’s last name, becoming Dean Rutherford. His father left the family when he was born, and he was uprooted multiple times to live with different family members in Michigan, Virginia, and again in Tennessee. He was born Larry Dean Flynn in Lake City in East Tennessee, on March 26, 1955.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |