Country industry veteran Steve Thurman died at age 62 on Friday, June 8.

He is perhaps best-known as an early champion of Diamond Rio, Joe Diffie and Tim McGraw. Thurman was also a mainstay of the NATD (Nashville Association of Talent Directors).

While a student at MTSU in the 1970s, he became chairman of the school’s concert committee. He and roommate Charles Dorris also worked Municipal Auditorium concerts for promoters Sound Seventy and Varnell Enterprises. After graduation, Thurman worked for the country agency Top Billing.

According to Dorris, he next began managing The Tennessee River Boys. He re-named them Diamond Rio and reportedly arranged their Arista Records contract. He also brought the band to Charles Dorris & Associates.

He and agent Dick Beacham signed the then-unknown Joe Diffie and Tim McGraw, among others.

In recent years, Thurman became one of the key organizers of the NATD, which stages an annual awards banquet in Nashville, a CMA Fest picnic for booking and promotion executives, and a speaker series, among other events.

Stephen Odell Thurman died of respiratory issues, pneumonia and a blood infection. He is survived by his mother, Norene Harris Thurman, by brothers Stand and Brian and by nephews, cousins, aunts and uncles.

Funeral services were held on Tuesday, June 12 at 1 p.m. at Coulter Garrison Funeral Home in Dayton, TN, followed by his burial in Spence Cemetery in Dayton.

Bass player Wayne Secrest, a mainstay of the hit country band Confederate Railroad, died on Saturday, June 2, at age 68.

Secrest formed the group with lead singer Danny Shirley and band mates Michael Lamb, Gates Nichols, Chris McDaniel and Mark Dufresne in 1967. Confederate Railroad became a local headlining nightclub attraction in the region encompassing Atlanta, northern Alabama and Chattanooga in the 1970s.

During the following decade, the group was the backing band on the road for both David Allan Coe and Johnny Paycheck. Its enthusiastic regional following led to a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 1992. Confederate Railroad’s debut album for the label included six top-40 singles, including the top-10 successes “Jesus and Mama,” “Queen of Memphis” and “Trashy Women,” plus such memorable tunes as “When You Leave That Way You Can Never Go Back,” “She Never Cried” and “She Took It Like a Man.”

As a result, the Confederate Railroad album was certified a Double Platinum seller. Secrest and the other band members were cited in the liner notes, but did not play on this disc. Nevertheless, Confederate Railroad was named Best New Group at the 1993 ACM Awards.

The band’s second Atlantic CD, 1994’s Notorious, included a return to the country top-10 with “Daddy Never Was the Cadillac Kind.” Other memorable tracks included “Elvis and Andy,” “I Am Just a Rebel” and “Three Verses.”

This time, Secrest and the other Confederate Railroaders played on the album. Notorious was certified Platinum for a million in sales. The group’s third Atlantic CD was 1995’s When and Where. The title tune became the collection’s biggest success. But the charting track “When He Was My Age” was an early songwriting credit for future star Kenny Chesney.

Keep On Rockin’ became the band’s final Atlantic CD in 1998. The label repackaged its hits on 2000’s Rockin’ Country Party Pack. Confederate Railroad reappeared via the Unleashed CD on Audium/Koch in 2001.

Cheap Thrills was issued by Shanachie in 2007. Secrest and the rest of the band were showcased on the 2010 CD Live: Back to the Barrooms.

The group’s final album with Secrest as a member was 2016’s Lucky to Be Alive. He withdrew from the group last year due to ill health.

Wayne Secrest passed away in Lexington, Kentucky. Survivors include son Ricci Stassi, granddaughter Isabella Stassi Secrest, companion Pam Stacy Simons, stepmother Virginia Secrest and stepbrothers David Nagel, Paul Nagel and John Nagel.

At Secrest’s request, no services will be held. He will be cremated and his ashes scattered at his favorite fly-fishing spot on the Snake River in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Glenn Snoddy, the founder of Woodland Sound and the dean of Nashville’s recording engineers, has died at age 96.

Snoddy was born in Shelbyville, TN on May 4, 1922. He learned radio technology while serving in the Army during World War II. After the war, he began working as an audio engineer at various Middle Tennessee radio stations, then went to work for the Brown Brothers Recording Service in downtown Nashville. This facility was the location of some of Music City’s earliest recording sessions.

He went to work for WSM radio in 1951. At the station, he engineered broadcasts of swing bands, the Grand Ole Opry, Ernest Tubb’s Midnight Jamboree, gospel shows and other diverse programs. He also worked at WSMV-TV, becoming a pioneering television engineer in Nashville.

In 1960, Snoddy became the chief engineer at Owen Bradley’s famed Quonset Hut on Music Row. He engineered all of Bradley’s productions of Patsy Cline, among others. He remained at the facility after Columbia Records bought it in 1962, working on records by such legends as Johnny Cash, Flatt & Scruggs, Ray Price, Carl Smith and Marty Robbins.

Snoddy was the engineer on the 1961 Robbins hit “Don’t Worry.” During the recording session, Grady Martin’s bass guitar fed a distorted signal through a faulty circuit in Snoddy’s mixing console. The engineer invented a circuit approximating this sound, which Gibson then marketed as an electric-guitar pedal. This was the birth of the fuzz tone used so memorably on “Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones in 1965 and later extensively in psychedelic rock music.

During his years at The Quonset Hut, Snoddy also created the first stereo recording console in Nashville. He hired a then-unknown Kris Kristofferson to be the studio’s janitor.

In 1967, Snoddy took over an old movie theater in East Nashville and converted it into Woodland Sound Studios. At the time, it was one of the most technologically advanced recording facilities in the city.

Woodland was the site of the historic recording sessions for The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1971 collection Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Kansas recorded its “Dust in the Wind” 1978 rock hit there. The Charlie Daniels Band created its famed “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” in 1979 at Woodland. “Elvira” by The Oak Ridge Boys (1981) and “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro (1968) are among the many other iconic hits from the studio.

Barbara Mandrell, Lefty Frizzell, Tammy Wynette, Willie Nelson, Billy “Crash” Craddock, Eddie Rabbitt, Johnny Lee, Loretta Lynn, Charlie McCoy, Clint Black, Roy Clark, Donna Fargo, Aaron Tippin, Rosanne Cash, Conway Twitty and many other country greats recorded hits at Snoddy’s studio.

Woodland also hosted John Prine, Neil Young, Andy Williams, Joe Simon, Linda Ronstadt, Lynyrd Skynyrd, John Hiatt, Amy Grant, J.J. Cale, Joe Tex, Tracy Nelson, The Indigo Girls, Jimmy Buffett, Slim Harpo, Gordon Lightfoot and other pop stars. It was notable as Nashville’s headquarters for black-gospel recording.

Snoddy expanded the studio to 16,000 square feet, making it one of the few rooms in Nashville big enough to record full orchestras. He upgraded to 24-track recording there. Woodland also housed a mastering facility.

Snoddy was long active in the Nashville chapter of the Recording Academy. He served as its board president in 1973-74. He remained at Woodland Sound even after selling it to AVI in 1980. He retired from the studio around 1990. Since 2001, Woodland Sound has been owned by the Americana-music team of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

In later years, Glenn Snoddy operated an antique mall for a short time on Old Hickory Boulevard in suburban Hermitage.

He passed away at his home in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on May 21.

Longtime country music executive Joe Taylor died on Monday, May 14, at age 85.

As the head of the Joe Taylor Artist Agency, he was one of the industry’s top talent executives for decades. Taylor represented such artists as Sammi Smith (“Help Me Make It Through the Night”), Dave Dudley (“Six Days on the Road”), John Anderson (“Swingin’”), David Frizzell (“I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home”), Johnny Paycheck (“Take This Job and Shove It”) and Sylvia (“Nobody”).

At one time or another, his roster also included such Hall of Fame members as Connie Smith, George Jones, Kitty Wells, Alabama and Grandpa Jones. Grand Ole Opry stars Johnny Russell, Jim & Jesse, Stringbean and Ray Pillow were booked by the Joe Taylor Artist Agency, as were Hee Haw TV stars Junior Samples, Archie Campbell, and Gordie Tapp.

Joe D. Taylor was born in McMinnville in 1933 and graduated from the University of Tennessee. After working for the Chattanooga Free Press and Chattanooga Times and serving in the U.S. Army, he entered the music business.

In 1960, he was hired as the first director of talent for the Wil-Helm Agency, booking shows for Loretta Lynn, The Wilburn Brothers, Joe Dowell and others. In 1962-64 he was the advertising manager for Martha White Flour, a major sponsor of the Grand Ole Opry. This brought him into close contact with the company’s celebrity spokesmen Flatt & Scruggs and Jim & Jesse.

He formed the Joe Taylor Artist Agency in 1964. In addition to the many artists listed above, the company represented Mickey Gilley, Dave & Sugar, Stella Parton, Billie Jo Spears, Ronnie Prophet, Bobby G. Rice, Lawanda Lindsey, Bobby Lord, Johnny Wright and Brian Collins.

Taylor persevered through decades of music-industry changes. His agency was a mainstay throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It helped to establish country music’s popularity in Europe. In later years, Joe Taylor served as the president of R.O.P.E. (Reunion of Professional Entertainers).

He is survived by children Lisa Easterling and Brent Taylor, by grandchildren Selena Foutch and Joseph Ellis, and three great-grandchildren.

A Life Celebration will be held at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 22, in The Pavilion at Harpeth Hills Funeral Home. Visitation will be 1:30-2:30 p.m. prior to the memorial. Harpeth Hills Funeral Home is at 9090 Hwy 100, Nashville, TN 37221 (615-646-9292).

Musician, composer and arranger Ronn Huff died March 18. To honor his life, a service will be held at 2 p.m. on April 7 in Wightman Chapel at Scarritt Bennett in Nashville, with a time of visitation beginning at 1 p.m.

In 1973, Huff arranged and recorded Alleluia, A Praise Gathering which became the first Christian music recording to receive and RIAA Gold Album certification. He was the producer and principal conductor for the Nashville Symphony from 1994 until 2002. In 2005, he was inducted into the Gospel Music Association Hall of Fame. His arrangements can be heard on recordings by Faith Hill, Amy Grant, Celine Dion, Jewel, Martina McBride, Alison Krauss, Sandi Patty, Keith Urban, George Strait, Clint Black and Boston Pops. In 2011, he received the Golden Baton Award from the Nashville Symphony.

Huff was also a founding member of the Friends of the Arts at Belmont Board, whose members support the College of Visual and Performing Arts. In 2005, the Ronn and Donna Huff Endowed Scholarship was created to support a Belmont Music student majoring in Composition and Arranging.

Huff is the father of musicians/songwriters/producers Dann Huff and David Huff, and their brother Ronn Huff II.