Joanna Stanfield Montgomery

Joanna Montgomery, wife of tech entrepreneur Mark Montgomery, passed away on Tuesday, July 28 following a long battle with cancer. She was 47.

She bravely documented her journey on her blog, sharing her story of balancing motherhood and cancer. She was the focus of a documentary series, appeared on Katie Couric’s talk show, and in two front-page stories in The Tennessean.

Joanna was born Aug. 23, 1967 in St. Joe, Missouri and her family moved to the Nashville area when she was in fifth grade. As an adult, she worked as a paralegal, and was passionate about family law.

She and Mark married in 2011 and their daughter, Magnolia Grace, was born the same year. The doctors discovered Joanna’s cancer during her c-section.

The family requests charitable donations in lieu of flowers. Donations can also be made to the Magnolia Foundation, a nonprofit organization for research about gynecologic cancers. Magnolia Foundation C/O Rashford Kruse P.O. Box 121228 Nashville, TN 37212.

The Tennessean has a beautifully written tribute to Joanna here.

Patsy Stoneman Murphy.

Singer, bandleader and tireless proponent of her family’s musical legacy, Patsy Stoneman Murphy died last week.

The daughter of Country Music Hall of Fame (CMHoF) member Ernest V. “Pop” Stoneman, she was a recording artist, a pioneer bluegrass female, a preserver/popularizer of the autoharp and a colorful personality. She was 90 when she passed away Thursday morning (July 23) at her home in Manchester, Tenn.

After her father died, Patsy assumed leadership of the family band The Stonemans. She campaigned for the next four decades for Pop’s induction into the CMHoF. Pop Stoneman (1893-1968) was finally inducted in 2008.

Patsy played guitar, jaw harp and banjo, in addition to autoharp. She was the family’s historian who saved most of its memorabilia while also maintaining her own musical career. She was born in 1925, the year her father became one of country music’s first million-selling artists. His “The Titanic” was a blockbuster hit that year, and it remains the most famous song about the 1912 ocean-liner disaster.

In 1927, he was the star who drew others to the Bristol, Tenn. recording sessions where Jimmie Rodgers and The Carter Family were discovered. Although one of country’s earliest stars, he fell upon hard times during The Depression of the 1930s.

The Stonemans had 23 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood. Several of the children became musicians. Patsy and older brother Eddie (1920-2001) began performing comeback shows with their father around 1939.

More offspring joined Pop during the “folk revival” of the 1940s and 1950s. Scott Stoneman (1932-1973) became a world-champion fiddler. Donna Stoneman is a renowned mandolin virtuoso. Roni Stoneman became a famous comic on TV’s Hee Haw.

After a time spent away from music, Patsy again performed with The Stonemans in 1964-65. She became one of the voices in the Country Bear Jamboree animatronic show at Disneyland.

But Patsy was initially better known as the leader of her own group, beginning in 1963 in the Washington, D.C. area. This made her perhaps the first female bluegrass bandleader in history.
Meanwhile, Pop and her siblings moved to Nashville. The Stonemans had a string of country chart singles in 1966-68. They launched their own nationally syndicated TV show in 1966-67, and Patsy became a frequent guest on it. In 1967, The Stonemans were the CMA’s first Vocal Group of the Year winners. Pop died the following year.

At this point, Patsy took over as the leader of the family group and moved to Nashville. She recorded with The Stonemans on such LPs as A Stoneman Christmas (MGM, 1969), Dawn of The Stonemans’ Age (RCA, 1970), In All Honesty (RCA, 1970) and California Blues (RCA, 1971). In 1981, she assembled 17 extended family members and produced the acclaimed CMH Records double-LP The First Family of Country Music. Patsy’s husband John “Jack” Murphy became manager of the group.

Brothers Van (1940-1995) and Jimmy (1937-2002) were both singers in The Stonemans. Following their deaths, Patsy moved more and more to the forefront. With Donna and/or Roni, she recorded For God and Country (1990), The Stoneman Tradition (2012) and a number of other albums. In 1987, she also launched At Home With The Stonemans as a weekly show on WSVT radio in Smyrna, Tenn.

“I am not ready to hang up any of our instruments yet,” she said of her ongoing efforts to promote the family’s music. “We have too much to offer the country music business to just throw up our hands and quit.

“Besides, we have been in the business longer than anybody else, and it just wouldn’t be fair to Daddy to stop.”

She spearheaded the creation of Ivan M. Tribe’s 1993 book, The Stonemans. A number of reissues of Pop Stoneman’s music also kept his memory alive. Supported by all country historians, she campaigned relentlessly for her father.

Patsy Stoneman Murphy’s feisty, outspoken, fearless, funny and frank personality made her a media favorite. After her lively acceptance of her father’s induction into the CMHoF, fellow honoree Emmylou Harris exclaimed, “Patsy Stoneman, you are the BOMB!”

Patsy Stoneman Murphy is pre-deceased by her husband of 39 years, John “Jack” Murphy. She is survived by sisters Roni and Donna Stoneman. Visitation will be at Mount Olivet Funeral Home on Monday, July 27, 5-8 p.m. and on Tuesday, July 28, 11 a.m.-1.p.m. Her funeral service and internment will be held immediately following on Tuesday.

Local radio and TV personality Al Wyntor passed away peacefully Sunday (July 5). He was 68.

Born Irvin Rusley in Carrington, ND, Wyntor became a Music City TV staple in the late ‘80s as co-host of TNN’s Video Morning show. He later hosted the syndicated radio show Nashville Insider, which aired on dozens of country stations around the country.

He is survived by his children, Jim (Amy) Rusley, Jeni Rusley, Chris (Brandy) Rusley, and Lindie Rusley, and nine grandchildren. The family will receive friends on July 9 from 10 a.m.- 12 p.m. at Hillsboro Church of Christ, 5800 Hillsboro Pike in Nashville and a celebration of life will be conducted at 12 p.m. Interment will follow in Middle Tennessee Veterans Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Wounded Warrior Project. 

Red Lane

Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Red Lane has passed away at age 76.

Lane died Wednesday night, July 1, following a long battle with cancer. He is noted as the creator of such big hits as “Til’ I Get It Right” (Tammy Wynette, 1973), “Darling You Know I Wouldn’t Lie” (Conway Twitty, 1969) and “New Looks From an Old Lover” (B.J. Thomas, 1981).

Born Hollis DeLaughter on Feb. 9, 1939, he was a native of Bogalusa, Louisiana. His sharecropper father taught him to play guitar. The family moved around a lot, following farming seasons. Lane graduated high school in Indiana and joined the Air Force.

Trained as an airplane mechanic, he also performed music throughout his enlistment. While stationed in Hawaii, he performed on the Waikiki radio show Hawaii Calls. While stationed in Omaha, Nebraska in 1958, he began performing in area nightclubs six nights a week.

Following his discharge, Red Lane performed in Indiana, California, Arizona and Texas. Inspired by Willie Nelson, he began writing songs at this time. Singer-songwriter Justin Tubb urged Lane to send his songs to Tree Publishing in Nashville.

Tree’s Buddy Killen signed him as a staff songwriter in 1963 and helped Lane to move to Music City. Tubb hired him as a guitarist in his band. Red Lane scored his first songwriting hit when Faron Young took his “My Friend On the Right” up the charts in 1964.

Nelson recorded Lane’s “Blackjack County Chain” in 1967. Dottie West had a hit with their co-written “Country Girl” in 1968. The song inspired a series of popular Coca-Cola ad jingles for West. Red Lane became her bandleader, and the two collaborated on dozens of other songs.

Lane’s first top-10 success came when Waylon Jennings recorded “Walk On Out of My Mind” in 1968. He repeated the feat with Eddy Arnold’s recording of “They Don’t Make Love Like They Used To” in 1969. Twitty’s 1969 recording of “Darling You Know I Wouldn’t Lie” inspired Elvis Costello to re-record the song in 1994.

Bobby Bare, Roger Miller, Jack Palance, Wanda Jackson, Lee Hazelwood & Ann-Margret, Jimmy Dickens, Tommy Cash, Jack Greene & Jeannie Seely, Johnny Paycheck, George Jones, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, T.G. Sheppard and Connie Smith were among the many who recorded Red Lane songs in the 1960s and 1970s.

The songwriter also became a Nashville session guitarist. Chet Atkins signed him as a recording artist to RCA, and Lane scored a moderate-sized hit with “The World Needs a Melody” in 1971. The song was subsequently a single for Johnny Cash and was also recorded by The Kingston Trio, Bill Anderson, Mother Maybelle Carter, The Chuck Wagon Gang and others.

Lane’s other charted singles as an artist were “Set the World On Fire (With Love)” (1971), “It Was Love While It Lasted” (1972) and “Throw a Rope Around the Wind” (1972). The last named was on the soundtrack of the Robert Mitchum movie Going Home.

Red Lane and Merle Travis co-wrote the “Ride This Train” segments on The Johnny Cash Show on ABC-TV in 1969-71.

After Wynette hit the top of the charts with “Til I Get It Right” in 1973, the song was recorded by dozens of others, including Kenny Rogers, Englebert Humperdinck, Trisha Yearwood, Wynonna Judd, Millie Jackson, Solomon Burke, Bob Dylan and Highway 101.

Later in the decade, Lane forged a musical partnership with Merle Haggard, who recorded nearly 30 Red Lane songs. These included 1977’s “Ain’t Your Memory Got No Pride at All” and the 1979 hit “My Own Kind of Hat” (revived by Alan Jackson in 1999). Lane also played guitar on Haggard recording sessions and sometimes toured in the superstar’s band.

In 1981, B.J. Thomas hit No. 1 with Lane’s “New Looks From an Old Love” and John Conlee scored with “Miss Emily’s Picture.” Keith Whitley released Lane’s “Would These Arms Be in Your Way” in 1987, and the song was then recorded by Vern Gosdin, Mark Chesnutt, Daryle Singletary and more.

Others who recorded his songs in the 1980s and 1990s included Loretta Lynn, The Oak Ridge Boys, Ricky Van Shelton, Ray Charles, Doug Stone, Jack Greene, Joe Diffie, Skip Ewing, Waylon Jennings and Suzy Bogguss. Red Lane was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1993.

Lane’s success continued into the new millennium. George Strait had a hit with his “Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa” in 2003. His songs appeared on albums by Lee Ann Womack, Reba McEntire, Joan Osborne, The Del McCoury Band and more. In 2010, he was honored at the Country Music Hall of Fame’s “Poets & Prophets” songwriter series.

The tunesmith led a colorful, unconventional lifestyle. He lived in an airplane fuselage grounded near Ashland City, TN and was an avid skydiver.