Songwriting Great Sonny Curtis Passes

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Sonny Curtis

Singer-songwriter Sonny Curtis died Friday (Sept. 19) at age 88 following a sudden illness.

Curtis is a Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member and a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee as a member of The Crickets. His catalog includes such standards as “Walk Right Back,” “I Fought the Law,” “Love Is All Around,” “More Than I Can Say,” and “I’m No Stranger to the Rain.” He was also a recording artist for Viva, Elektra, Imperial and other labels.

Born in West Texas in 1937, Curtis cited bluegrass as his earliest musical influence. He had an uncle who was in Bill Monroe’s band.

Curtis began performing in the early 1950s as a teenager in Lubbock alongside Buddy Holly and Waylon Jennings. He and Holly first came to Nashville to record in 1956. Among the tunes was his composition “Rock Around With Ollie Vee.” After Sonny Curtis graduated from high school, Webb Pierce recorded his song “Someday” and took it to No. 12 on the country hit parade in 1957.

An excellent guitarist, Curtis toured for a time backing Slim Whitman. Back in Texas, he and Holly formed The Crickets. Curtis left the band to record solo for Dot Records. He rejoined the group just after Holly’s death in a 1959 plane crash. He and the remaining Crickets became The Everly Brothers’ band. They also issued eight albums in 1960-73 with Curtis, the group’s main songwriter, on lead vocals and guitar.

Sonny Curtis moved to the West Coast in 1960, just prior to being drafted into the Army. While he was in the service, the Everlys recorded his “Walk Right Back” and hit the top-10 on the pop charts with it in 1961. Anne Murray revived the song as a top-10 country hit in 1978. He also wrote “More Than I Can Say” while he was in the Army, and it was introduced by Bobby Vee in 1961. Leo Sayer revived it as an international pop hit of 1980.

After his discharge, Sonny Curtis became a session guitarist and a jingle writer for McDonald’s, Yamaha, Suzuki, Buick, Chrysler, Honda, Mattel, Olympia Beer, Plymouth, MasterCard, Bell Telephone and Western Airlines. He also continued to score as a songwriter. Andy Williams took his “A Fool Never Learns” into the pop top-10 in 1964.

The Bobby Fuller Four made “I Fought the Law” into a hit in 1966. The song became a rock standard recorded by The Clash, Lou Reed, The Dead Kennedys, Tom Petty, The Grateful Dead, Brice Springsteen, John Cougar Mellencamp, Bryan Adams, and Green Day, as well as by Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Rodriguez, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson.

Gary Lewis & The Playboys scored with Curtis’s “Where Will the Words Come From” in 1966, cementing his status as a top-tier tunesmith. Teen idols Ricky Nelson, Buddy Knox, Bryan Hyland, Roy Orbison, Johnny Rivers, Mark Dinning, and Bobby Vinton recorded his songs. So did Dean Martin, Jack Jones, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, The Mills Brothers, Glen Campbell, Eddy Arnold, Vic Damone, Peter Lawford, The Lennon Sisters, and the songwriter’s idol, Chet Atkins.

Throughout the 1960s, Sonny Curtis continued to record, himself. Beatle Hits Flamenco Guitar Style (1964), The First of Sonny Curtis (1968), and The Sonny Curtis Style (1969) became his first three albums. They contained “My Way of Life,” “I Wanna Go Bummin’ Around,” “Atlanta Georgia Stray,” and “The Straight Life,” which became minor country chart entries.

“The Straight Life” was picked up by Bobby Goldsboro, who made it a top-10 A/C hit in 1968. More than a dozen other artists subsequently recorded it.

Two years later, Mary Tyler Moore was looking for a theme song for a CBS-TV sit com she was launching. He submitted “Love Is All Around,” and the show’s producers liked it so much they flew his demo to Minneapolis to accompany Moore as she tossed her hat into the air during the filming of the opening moments of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It turned out to be his biggest singing hit, since it aired nationally weekly for seven years thereafter. “Love Is All Around” has also been recorded by Joan Jett, Husker Du, and Sammy Davis Jr.

Meanwhile, he continued his studio work. In 1970, he provided backup vocals on Eric Clapton’s first solo album. That is Sonny Curtis’s finger-picking guitar work on Vicki Lawrence’s 1973 No. 1 hit “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.”

He moved to Music City in 1976. Waylon Jennings, who had already recorded the Sonny Curtis song “Destiny’s Child,” took him and The Crickets on the road as his opening act. Rosanne Cash revived “Where Will the Words Come From” in 1981.

Curtis’s Nashville songs were soon recorded by John Schneider, Bobby Bare, Tammy Wynette, Mel Tillis and other country stars. Ricky Skaggs sang “He was Onto Something (So He Made You)” as a No. 25 country hit of 1990. The late Keith Whitley turned “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” into a No. 1 country smash of 1989. It was named the CMA Single of the Year.

In 1990, Sonny Curtis won an Emmy Award for his theme song for the Burt Reynolds TV series Evening Shade, which he also sang. Joe Diffie, J.J. Cale, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, LaCosta, Sammy Kershaw, John Conlee, LaWanda Lindsey, Skeeter Davis, Jerry Reed and other stars recorded Sonny Curtis songs in the 1980s and 1990s.

Elektra signed him as a Nashville recording artist, and he issued Sonny Curtis (1979), Love Is All Around (1980), and Rollin’ (1981) as LPs for the label. He made the country charts with seven singles from these collections, including the top-40 entries “The Real Buddy Holly Story,” “Love Is All Around,” “Good Ol’ Girls,” and “Married Women” in 1980-81.

Sonny Curtis developed a substantial overseas following. He performed for sold-out crowds in England, Ireland, Denmark, France, Scotland, Belgium and Holland.

He also continued to tour extensively with the reassembled Crickets, bass player Joe B. Mauldin (1940-2015) and drummer Jerry Allison (1939-2022). The Crickets and Their Buddies album of 2004 found them collaborating with Eric Clapton, Rodney Crowell, John Prine, Graham Nash, J.D. Souther, Vince Gill, Nanci Griffith and other celebrities.

Sonny Curtis also continued to record solo albums for independent labels in the 1990s and 2000s, and he became a genial and much-loved presence at various music-industry functions. He retired in 2016.

In 1991, Sonny Curtis was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2007, he and The Crickets were installed in the Music City Walk of Fame. In 2008, they were inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame & Museum. In 2012, he and the group became Rock & Roll Hall of Fame members.

Over the years, five of his songs have achieved “Millionaire” status in the annals of BMI. This means that “Walk Right Back,” “More Than I Can Say,” “I Fought the Law,” “The Straight Life” and “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” have been performed at least a million times each. More than 120 Sonny Curtis songs have been recorded to date, by artists from across the musical spectrum.

Survivors include Louise Curtis, his wife of more than 50 years, and their children. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Robert K Oermann
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