Jim Weatherly. Photo: Courtesy Songwriters Hall of Fame

Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Jim Weatherly died Wednesday morning (Feb. 3) at his home in Brentwood at age 77.

His classics include “Midnight Train to Georgia,” “(You’re The) Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” “Someone Else’s Star,” “Neither One of Us” and “Where Do I Put Her Memory.” Country superstar Ray Price recorded more than 50 of his songs.

James Dexter Weatherly was a native of Pontotoc, Mississippi who began writing songs when he was 13 years old. Handsome and athletic, he became a football quarterback at the University of Mississippi. His Ole Miss team won the national championship in 1962. The Rebels repeated as SEC champs the following year, again with him as quarterback.

While in college, he and some friends formed a rock band. They came to Nashville in 1966, but found no interest. The group moved to L.A. and scored a recording contract with Verve Records as The Gordian Knot. With Weatherly as lead singer, the act issued its LP in 1968. The Godian Knot was on the Sunset Strip scene during the heyday of The Byrds, Johnny Rivers, Barry McGuire and other folk-rockers of the era.

Song publishers took an interest in his songs. In 1973-75, Gladys Knight & The Pips had big hits with his “Neither One of Us,” “Where Peaceful Waters Flow,” “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” “Love Finds Its Own Way” and, unforgettably, “Midnight Train to Georgia.”

At the same time, Nashville artists began scoring with Weatherly tunes. In fact, Ray Price’s 1973 No. 1 country hit with “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me” predated Knight’s. Bob Luman hit the country Top 10 in 1973 with “Neither One of Us.”

Weatherly also wrote Luman’s 1974 country success “Just Enough to Make Me Stay,” as well as the Price country hits “Storms of Troubled Times” (1974), “Like a First Time Thing” (1974), “Like Old Times Again” (1975), “Roses and Love Songs” (1975), “Farthest Thing From My Mind” (1975) and “If You Ever Change Your Mind” (1975).

Songwriting success led to a solo recording contract. Jim Weatherly hit No. 11 on the pop charts with 1974’s “The Need to Be” and No. 9 on the country charts with 1975’s “I’ll Still Love You.” His top-30 1977 country single “All That Keeps Me Going” was later recorded by Trini Lopez.

In 1979, Bill Anderson took Weatherly’s “This Is a Love Song” into the top-20, and Charley Pride hit No. 1 with the songwriter’s “Where Do I Put Her Memory.”

Jim Weatherly began traveling to Nashville to collaborate with Music Row songwriters around 1982. In 1984, he had Top 10 country hits with Glen Campbell singing his “A Lady Like You,” Ed Bruce’s recording of “You Turn Me On (Like a Radio)” and the Earl Thomas Conley & Gus Hardin duet “All Tangled Up in Love.” He began living in Nashville in 1985.

Bryan White hit No. 1 with Weatherly’s co-written “Someone Else’s Star” in 1995. Since 2000, the songwriter’s works have been recorded by Kenny Rogers, Delbert McClinton, Jeff Carson, Etta James, The Manhattans and more.

Among the hundreds of others who have recorded Jim Weatherly songs are Dionne Warwick, Vince Gill, Tanya Tucker, Mac Davis, Marie Osmond, B.J. Thomas, Andy Williams, Eddy Arnold, Lynn Anderson, Joan Osborne, Neil Diamond, The Temptations, Trisha Yearwood, The Oak Ridge Boys, Hall & Oates, The Spinners, Reba McEntire, Dean Martin, Ray Charles, Johnny Lee, Peter Cetera, Lee Greenwood, Brenda Lee, Aretha Franklin, Steve Wariner, Kenny Chesney, Julie Andrews, Dottie West, Bobby Goldsboro, Garth Brooks, The Indigo Girls, Johnny Mathis, Dan Seals, the Rev. James Cleveland, Peggy Lee and Widespread Panic.

Weatherly’s major-label albums were Weatherly (RCA, 1972), A Gentler Time (RCA, 1973), Jim Weatherly (RCA, 1973), The Songs of Jim Weatherly (Buddah, 1974), Magnolias & Misfits (Buddah, 1975), The People Some People Choose to Love (ABC, 1976) and Pictures & Rhymes (ABC, 1976). He also recorded a number of CDs for his own Brizac label.

He was ASCAP’S Songwriter of the Year in 1974. Weatherly was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006 and became a member of the national Songwriters Hall of Fame in New York in 2014. He published Midnight Train as his autobiography in 2018.

Jim Weatherly is survived by his wife, Cynthia, daughter Brighton and son Zack. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Hugh X. Lewis

Singer-songwriter Hugh X. Lewis, who created country hits in the 1960s and starred on national TV, has passed away at age 90.

Lewis charted 15 titles on the country charts in 1964-79. He wrote successes for himself as well as for a dozen other Nashville stars. He was prominent as the host of a syndicated television series, had his own Nashville nightclub and was featured in several country music movies.

Born Hubert Bradley Lewis, he worked in Kentucky coal mines while beginning his country music career. During the late 1950s, he won a new-talent competition at WLW in Cincinnati, appeared on a local weekly TV show in Johnson City, Teneessee, and worked at the Saturday Night Jamboree radio show in Huntington, West Virginia on WSAZ.

By the early 1960s, he was appearing on the Tennessee Barn Dance in Knoxville and on Kentucky’s Renfro Valley Barn Dance. Hugh X. Lewis moved to Nashville in 1963 and was signed as a staff songwriter by Cedarwood Music.

In 1964, he hit pay dirt as the writer of the No. 1 Stonewall Jackson hit “B.J. the D.J.” Jackson subsequently recorded a half dozen more Lewis tunes, including “Angry Words” (No. 16, 1968) and “Ship in the Bottle” (No. 19, 1969).

Carl Smith took the songwriter’s “Take My Ring Off Your Finger” into the top-20 in 1964. Carl Butler & Pearl succeeded with the Lewis tune “Just Thought I’d Let You Know” the following year.

Kitty Wells, Ray Pillow, Mac Wiseman, Jimmy C. Newman, George Morgan, Charley Pride, Jimmy Dickens, Lynn Anderson and Jim Ed Brown also recorded songs written or co-written by Hugh X. Lewis. Del Reeves & Bobby Goldsboro sang a duet on his song “I Just Wasted the Rest.”

Success as a songwriter led to a recording contract with Kapp Records. Lewis never scored a top-20 hit as a singer, but his smooth baritone was notable on a string of country singles. He wrote or co-wrote nine of his 15 charted songs.

“What I Need Most” (1965), “Out Where the Ocean Meets the Sky” (Mel Tillis/Fred Burch, 1965), “I’d Better Call the Law on Me” (1966), “You’re So Cold (I’m Turning Blue)” (Harlan Howard/Tony Senn, 1967) and “Evolution and the Bible” (1968) were top-40 entries. “All Heaven Broke Loose” was a top-20 hit in Canada in 1969.

His major-label LPs were The Hugh X. Lewis Album (1965), Just Before Dawn (1965), My Kind of Country (1966), Just a Prayer Away (1967) and Country Fever (1968).

Beginning in 1968, he hosted Hugh X. Lewis Country Club, a syndicated weekly TV show. By 1971, it was being aired in 31 markets. He opened his own nightclub in Printer’s Alley in 1972 and produced the remaining episodes of the show from there.

Lewis was also featured in the country B-movies Forty Acre Feud (1966), Gold Guitar (1967) and Cotton Pickin’ Chicken Pickers (1967).

Hugh X. Lewis retired in 1984, but returned to the music business in 1998. He began emphasizing gospel music with the albums God, Home & Country and Stand Up and Be Counted. In 2005, he appeared in the Christian children’s film Summer of Courage. He also became a performing poet, reciting inspirational verse on various radio programs and in churches.

Since 2017 he has been hosting a weekly gospel radio show called The Christian Country Store on WSGS and WKIC in Hazard, Kentucky. He has also had daily features on the Gospel Radio Network.

Lewis is Kentucky Colonel, became a member of the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame and was honored in the Walkway of Stars at the original Country Music Hall of Fame. He passed away on Dec. 29, and his death was announced Sunday (Jan. 17).

Hugh X. Lewis is survived by Anna Mae Lewis, his wife of 69 years, by daughter Saundra Taylor (Harry), two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. A memorial celebration of his life will take place at a later time.