Gary Buck (born 21 March 1940 in Thessalon, ON; died 14 October 2003 was a singer, songwriter, record producer, executive, administrator and one of Canadian country music’s most accomplished and versatile talents. He excelled at virtually every aspect of the business during his 45-year career.
He recorded dozens of hit singles, worked as a leading producer and a record executive, and started his own recording and publishing firm, which handled some of the top names in Canadian music. He also served five terms as international director of the Country Music Association in Nashville, co-founded the Academy of Country Music Entertainment (now the Canadian Country Music Association) and founded the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 2001.
Gary Ralph Buck was born in Thessalon but grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. As a child he played guitar and bass and in his teens he formed his band the Rock-A-Billies. He sang on CKCY radio with Ray Kovisto's band The Country Caravan. After briefly playing semi-pro baseball, he made his first recordings for the Canatal label in Toronto in 1959. In 1963, his song “Happy to Be Unhappy” was an international hit for the American label Petal, reaching No. 1 on the country chart of the American trade magazine Cashbox and cracking the Billboard country chart, making him only the third Canadian (after Hank Snow and Myrna Lorrie) to achieve that feat. Buck was subsequently hailed as Newcomer of the Year by Cashbox.
Other singles followed, including a second US hit, “The Wheel Song” (1964), and several others that reached No. 1 on the RPM country chart in Canada, including “The Weather Man” (1966), “Break the News to Lisa” (1965), “Mr. Brown” (1969) and “Wayward Woman of the World” (1970).In the mid-1960s, Buck moved from Sault Ste. Marie to Kitchener, ON, where he starred on CKCO-TV's The Gary Buck Show (1967–69). He appeared on other Canadian and US country music TV shows and made several appearances in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Buck’s later hits included “It Takes Time” (1971), “Saunders’ Ferry Lane” (1973), “What'll I Do” (1975) and “You Can't Change Horses” (1998). He also wrote and recorded many jingles. Among his later recordings were Western Swing & Country (1998) and the gospel album Don't Be Standin' on the Outside (2002).
Buck was also a prolific and sought-after producer, working on recordings by George Hamilton IV, Dallas Harms, Dick Damron, the Family Brown, Tommy Hunter, the Mercey Brothers, Al Cherny, Wayne Rostad, Billie Jo Spears, Johnny Duncan, Gene Watson and others. His own songs have been recorded by such pop and country artists as Bobby Curtola, Donna Darlene, Hunter, the Mercey Brothers and Orval Prophet, among many others. His own discography included more than 50 singles, as well as LPs for such labels as Canatal, Petal (issued by Sparton in Canada), Capitol, Tower, RCACamden and Broadland.
In 1970, Buck began to divide his time between performance and administration, serving as general manager from 1970 to 1971 of Capitol Records’ publishing affiliate, Beechwood Music. In this role he was instrumental in launching such significant songs as Anne Murray’s recording of Gene MacLellan’s “Snowbird,” George Hamilton IV’s cover of Damron’s “Countryfied,” and Gene Watson’s version of Harms’ “Paper Rosie.” He was co-founder of label Arpeggio in 1972. Founder of publishing companies Broadland Music Ltd., Doubleplay Music, and Grandslam Music in 1972. Founder of label Broadland in 1974 (which he sold controlling interest in, along with the two publishing companies, to Quality Records Limited in 1976). Founded label GB in 1977. He also founded Broadland International in Nashville in 1990 with a largely US roster that included George Hamilton IV. While based out of Kitchener, Ontario, in the 1970’s, Gary Buck hosted his own TV series on CKCO-TV and was regularly featured as a special guest on country radio and TV shows across Canada, in Nashville, and while touring with his band Loose Change in Australia, New Zealand and in 1979 the UK.
Buck served as international director of the Country Music Association in Nashville for five non-consecutive two-year terms, the first in 1970 and the fifth starting in 1990. In 1976, he co-founded the Academy of Country Music Entertainment (now Canadian Country Music Association). He also founded the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame, which began inducting individuals in 1984 and officially opened in Kitchener in 1989, eventually relocating to the Stampede grounds in Calgary in 1999. Buck later served as president of the Hall and was inducted in both artist and builder categories in 2001.Buck continued to produce albums for Hamilton and many Canadian musicians from Broadland's Nashville and Calgary offices until his death from cancer in Didsbury, Alberta, 14 October 2003 ,leaving behind a legacy unmatched in its breadth. He was posthumously inducted into the Northern Ontario Country Music Association’s Hall Of Fame in 2004.
(Edited from The Canadian Encyclopaedia, Soo Music Project & AllMusic)
Martha Carson (March 19, 1921 – December 16, 2004), born Irene Amburgey, was an American gospel-country music singer most popular during the 1950s.
The Amburgey Sisters
Amburgey was born in Neon, Kentucky (since absorbed into Fleming-Neon). She and her two sisters were spotted by radio barn-dance impresario John Lair and invited to join the cast of the WSB Barn Dance in Atlanta in 1938. The Amburgey sisters were given the hayseed names of Minnie, Marthie, and Mattie. After Amburgey left the group and teamed with her husband, mandolin player James Carson, in the 1940s, the stage name stuck and she became Martha Carson.
James & Martha Carson
The duo performed (with Martha on guitar) as the "Barn Dance Sweethearts". By the time of her divorce from James Carson in 1950, Martha had begun making solo appearances on Knoxville's WNOX radio. However, she couldn't record because the Barn Dance Sweethearts' label, Capitol, had them contracted through 1957 and refused to let her go solo, instead trying to pair her up with other male singers.
She began doing session work instead, appearing on The Carlisles' "Too Old to Cut the Mustard," "No Help Wanted," and other recordings by that group of unrelated performers headed by WNOX stalwart Bill Carlisle. Things began to change after Carson met Fred Rose in Nashville. He helped convince Capitol to let her record alone, and in 1951 she made her solo-single debut with "Satisfied", a gospel song she had written in response to audience disapproval over her divorce. The combination of Carson's powerful alto voice and the song's propulsive handclap backbeat formed one of the blocks on which early rock & roll was built. The song featured backup by Carlisle, Chet Atkins, and Carson's sister, Opal, now known as Jean Chapel. Although the song was not a hit at first, it gained momentum continuously over the next several years.
Carson joined Grand Ole Opry in 1952. By this time, Carson had written over 24 songs, and toured with country stars, such as Ferlin Husky, Jimmy Dickens, Moon Mullican, and Elvis Presley who was a fan of her gospel records. After their performances, she and Presley sang gospel duets, and he later claimed that she had more influence on his stage style than anyone else. In 1954 she switched from Capitol to RCA and recorded a pair of acclaimed albums, Journey to the Sky (1955) and Rock-a-My Soul (1957). Under the influence of the promoter Xavier Cossé, who had become her second husband, her music had acquired a smoother sound and a crossover appeal.
By 1955, Carson was living and recording all her work in New York. She had a series of minor hits that included "This Ole House", and "Saints and Chariot", a combination of two old favorites that Presley later covered in concert. After signing with the William Morris Agency in 1957, Carson and Crosse became full-time residents of New York, and she gained national exposure by appearing on The Steve Allen Show. She moved temporarily away from gospel-oriented music and toward citified country-pop, appearing on Tennessee Ernie Ford's television program and pursuing a style shaped in part by his big, low vocals and pop orchestral arrangements. It was a successful move for a time, but by the late 1950s, her star began to wane.
She remained in the music scene during the later 1960s and 70s, writing and performing in Tennessee, but she did not record again until the Starday/Gusto company approached her in 1977, asking her to re-record some of her songs for a Greatest Hits album. Carson agreed, and also recorded some of the new songs she had recently written. In the late 1970s, with her two sons grown, she began to devote more time to her love of music, playing many areas of the southern states. Audiences greeted her with great affection. She made appearances on Pop! Goes the Country and Nashville Now, and one of her songs was featured on an episode of the TV series Fame in 1983. Her comeback was cut short by the illness of her husband, Xavier. She went into retirement to care for him until his death in November 1990.
In 1996, the Kentucky legislator awarded Martha Carson an Honorable Citation for her contribution to country and gospel music. A Highway was named in her honor near her home town of Neon. In 2001, Carson's 80th birthday party was attended by many country singers including Melba Montgomery, Sonny James, Kitty Wells and Stonewall Jackson (musician). On December 16, 2004, Carson died at age 83 in Nashville, Tennessee.She had been in fragile health for the past year.
Irene Cara (March 18, 1959 – November 25, 2022) was an American singer and actress.
Irene Cara Escalera was born in the Bronx, New York, the youngest of five children of Louise, a Cuban-American cinema usher, and Gaspar Escalera, a Puerto Rican factory worker and saxophonist. From five years old she studied piano, dance and acting, making her Broadway debut, aged nine, in the musical She started singing and dancing professionally on Spanish-language television and made early TV appearances on The Original Amateur Hour (singing in Spanish) and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show.
In 1971, she was a regular on PBS's educational program The Electric Company as a member of the Short Circus, the show's band, appearing as a member during the show’s first season. In 1975 she made her film debut as Angela in Aaron Loves Angela, a “Romeo and Juliet” comedy drama set in Harlem. The following year she played the title role of Sparkle Williams in the Sparkle (1976), a rags to riches musical loosely based on the story of the Supremes. John Willis' Screen World, Vol. 28, named her one of twelve "Promising New Actors of 1976"; that same year, a readers' poll in Right On! magazine named her Top Actress.
Cara was proudest of landing a role in the 1979 television mini-series Roots: The Next Generations, in which she was cast as Alex Haley’s mother from adolescence to the age of 30. “Roots was the biggest thing in American TV history and it put my career and my mind on the right path,” she recalled. She burst on to the scene as rising star Coco Hernandez in Alan Parker’s 1980 hit movie Fame, topping the charts with the title track, which won Michael Gore a best original song Oscar.
The 1980 hit film Fame, directed by Alan Parker, catapulted Cara to stardom. She originally was cast as a dancer, but when producers David Da Silva and Alan Marshall and screenwriter Christopher Gore heard her voice, they re-wrote the role of Coco Hernandez for her to play. In this part, she sang both the title song "Fame" and the single "Out Here on My Own", which were both nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. These songs helped make the film's soundtrack a chart-topping, multi-platinum album, and it was the first time that two songs from the same film and sung by the same artist were nominated in the same category. Cara had the opportunity to be one of the few singers to perform more than one song at the Oscar ceremony; "Fame", written by Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, won the award for best original song that year, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.
Cara earned Grammy Award nominations in 1980 for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical. Billboard named her Top New Single Artist, and Cashbox magazine awarded her both Most Promising Female Vocalist and Top Female Vocalist. Asked by Fame TV series producers to reprise her role as Coco Hernandez, she declined, wanting to focus her attention on her recording career; Erica Gimpel assumed the role.
In 1983, Cara reached the peak of her music career with the title song for the movie Flashdance: "Flashdance... What a Feeling", which she co-wrote with Giorgio Moroder and Keith Forsey. Cara wrote the lyrics to the song with Keith Forsey while riding in a car in New York heading to the studio to record it; Moroder composed the music. Cara admitted later that she was initially reluctant to work with Giorgio Moroder because she had no wish to invite comparisons with Donna Summer, another artist who worked with Moroder. The song became a hit in several countries, attracting several awards for Cara. She shared the 1983 Academy Award for Best Original Song with Moroder and Forsey, becoming the first black woman to win an Oscar in a non-acting category and the youngest to receive an Oscar for songwriting. She won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, 1984 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and American Music Awards for Best R&B Female Artist and Best Pop Single of the Year.
In 1984, she was in the comedic thriller City Heat, co-starring with Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds and singing the standards "Embraceable You" and "Get Happy". She also co-wrote the theme song "City Heat", sung by the jazz vocalist Joe Williams. In May 1984, she scored her final Top 40 hit with "Breakdance" going to No. 8. "You Were Made for Me" reached No. 78 that summer, but she did not appear on the Hot 100 again. In 1985, Cara co-starred with Tatum O'Neal in Certain Fury. whilst working on the film she met stuntman Conrad Palmisano whom she married (but the marriage was dissolved in 1991). In 1986, she appeared in the film Busted Up. Cara also provided the voice of Snow White in the unofficial sequel to Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Filmation's Happily Ever After, in 1993. The same year, she appeared as Mary Magdalene in a tour of Jesus Christ Superstar with Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson, and Dennis DeYoung.
Cara released three studio albums: Anyone Can See in 1982, What a Feelin' in 1983, and Carasmatic in 1987, the most successful of these being What a Feelin'. In 1985, she collaborated with the Hispanic charity supergroup Hermanos in the song "Cantaré, cantarás", in which she sang a solo segment with the Spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo. Cara toured Europe and Asia throughout the 1990s, achieving several modest dance hits on European charts, but no U.S. chart hits. She released a compilation of Eurodance singles in the mid-to-late 1990s titled Precarious 90's. Cara also worked as a backup vocalist for Vicki Sue Robinson, Lou Reed, George Duke, Oleta Adams, and Evelyn "Champagne" King.
On the back of her success, Irene Cara paid a high price for fame, losing her husband, battling drink and drugs and becoming embroiled in an eight-year court battle with her record company over unpaid royalties from the Flashdance soundtrack and her first two solo records. This ended in 1993 with a ruling in her favour but with an award of only $1.5 million in unpaid royalties out of the $12 million she had claimed. Cara stated that, as a result, she was labelled as being difficult to work with and that the music industry "virtually blacklisted" her. She continued to land parts in films, though later on these mainly involved voice work. In 1997 Irene Cara recorded a new version of Flashdance with Germany’s star rapper, DJ BoBo for The Full Monty.
In the 2000s she formed her own production company, overseeing the all-female group Hot Caramel which she formed in 1999. Their album, called Irene Cara Presents Hot Caramel, was released in 2011.
Cara died from arteriosclerosis and hypertensive heart disease at her home on November 25, 2022, at 63 years of age; she also had diabetes. At the time of her death, Cara was a resident of Florida, living in Largo and maintaining a secondary address in New Port Richey, where her company, Caramel Productions, was located. “I wouldn’t wish fame on anyone, ” she said in 2009. “If I could go back, I’d be a lot less trusting of the people who were handling my career. I didn’t know the nature of the beast.”
Leroy Lovett (March 17, 1919 -December 9, 2013) was an American jazz pianist and arranger.
It would be impossible to include all the accomplishments of Leroy “Lee” Lovett in a short synopsis, but suffice it to say that he was the epitome of talent. However, and despite his long and successful career as a pianist and arranger-composer, he only recorded two albums under his own name, both in 1959.
Olga Samafoff
Leroy C. Lovett (sometimes called "Lee" Lovett or Leroy "Lee" Lovett) was one of the top ranking musicians in his native Philadelphia. Born in Germantown, he he studied piano with Sophie Stokowski (nee Olga Samaroff), the wife of Leopold Stokowski from the age of four, and began composing early. He received a bachelor's degree from Temple University and then continued his studies at the Schillinger House of Music. He directed his own band in Philadelphia before settling in New York City in 1945. There he arranged for Tiny Bradshaw and Luis Russell, and toured with Noble Sissle and Lucky Millinder, who he recorded with in 1949 and Big John Greer (1950). It was about then that Lovett decided to enter the recording field, and started handling sessions for Atlantic, Herald, Mercury, Columbia and RCA-Victor.
Mercer Ellington
After playing with Mercer Ellington he recorded as a swing pianist with the Johnny Hodges band (1951-2). This would become one of the finest jazz combos of the early ‘50s. The original group included such stellar tootlers as trombonist Lawrence Brown, (who was leaving Duke Ellington with Hodges), ex-Basie trumpeter Emmett Berry, and three ex-Ellingtonians, tenorist Al Sears, drummer Sonny Greer, and bassist Joe Benjamin. Although there were some personnel changes, the band remained active until late 1955, recording some great discs for Norman Granz’ labels Clef and Norgran. In those prolific years Lovett, working with Granz, wrote and arranged albums for Harry Carneyr (1954), Billie Holiday (1955), Lawrence Brown (1956), Cootie Williams (1957), and Cat Anderson (1959) and many others.
The talented Mr. Lovett also stood out as a songwriter of pop hits such as Can’t I? (1953) sung by Nat King Cole, All At Once (1954) by Don Cornell, and After the Lights Go Down Low (1956) by Al Hibbler. It would be impossible to include all his accomplishments in a short synopsis, but suffice it to say that Lee Lovett was the epitome of talent. From 1956 to 1957 Lovett was a record producer for Norman Granz. He then returned to Philadelphia and organized a 13 piece dance band, with which he recorded two albums under his own name, both in 1959: “Jazz Dance Party” and “Lee + 3”.
Here's ABC Hop from above album.
The first one, “Jazz Dance Party,” includes mainly rocking and slow selections that allow him to show all his versatility and trademark dexterity as a big band jazz arranger. Each section works its way up to some splendid demonstrations of exciting shouting, on which the so-called rhythm and blues players moved toward the rich wellspring of Ellington jazz. Improvisations are melodic, vividly swinging and loaded with wit. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these deeply moving performances is the great vitality with which the soloists are backed by the rest of the band in ensemble riffs—after they play their part, the band starts working on an introduction for the next solo, delivering some well-organized ensemble passages, with the Al Hall and “Butch” Ballard team swinging like mad all the way.
Leroy Lovett
“Lee + 3” finds Leroy leading a cohesive and versatile quartet session that swings from the get go. His piano playing, too often neglected, is forceful and passionate in the up-tempos, and subtle, rewarding and full of subdued emotion on the trio ballads. Saxophonist Bob Brown blows hard on tenor, with the phrasing, intonation and attack of a rooted blues player, and his work on alto is an exercise in eloquence. The roles of Hall and Ballard are thus boldly revealed in this stimulating set.
From 1959, he worked for Wynne Records and much later from 1968 to 1973 as an executive VP for Motown Records in Los Angeles. He also wrote film music. In his latter days Lovett, a native of Germantown, Pa., had two projects: his Executive Publishers Administration, a music consulting firm that advised artists and songwriters, and the Melodymakers Orchestra, which he belonged since 1987 arranging and playing piano. It was a a dance band with jazz flavourings that appeared the first Sunday of every month at Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City and the third Sunday of the month at Charley Brown’s in Thousand Oaks. He also played at private parties with a small band made up of guys from the big band. Lovett also appeared with the Uni-Bigband of Halle.
He died on December 9, 2013, in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California
(Edited from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Wikipedia, CD Liner notes & Los Angeles Times)
David Paul Briggs (March 16, 1943 – April 22, 2025) was a first-call American keyboardist, record producer, arranger, composer and studio owner. Briggs was one of an elite core of Nashville studio musicians known as "the Nashville Cats" and was featured in a major exhibition by the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2015.
David Paul Briggs was born in Killen, Alabama, northeast of Muscle Shoals. He was the elder of two sons of James and Myrtle (Myrick) Briggs. His father was a letter carrier. Classically trained, David began playing professionally at the age of 14. He worked in a local band called the Crunk Brothers and, through them, met Norbert Putnam and ultimately gained session work at Fame. Mr. Briggs and Mr. Putnam played on Tommy Roe’s chart-topping 1962 hit, “Sheila,” and were members of his backing band when Mr. Roe was an opening act for the Beatles in their first U.S. concert, in 1964.
As a member of the original rhythm section at Fame Recording Studios, he helped put the northern Alabama hamlet of Muscle Shoals on the musical map. He played on landmark R&B recordings like Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” (1962), Jimmy Hughes’s “Steal Away” (1964) and the Tams’ “What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)” (1963), all of which were Top 40 pop singles as well as R&B hits. Briggs, meanwhile, had begun writing songs and releasing the occasional record of his own as both a singer and keyboardist. One was a single produced by Owen Bradley, who urged him to move to Nashville in 1964 to do studio work.
Here's "I Say A Little Prayer" from above album.
Along with Putnam they began infusing country recordings with the understated, groove-rich variant of the Nashville Sound that became known as “countrypolitan.” In May 1966, he was given the opportunity of recording on sessions for Elvis Presley's album How Great Thou Art when Floyd Cramer was running late. Briggs continued to record and tour with Presley until February 1977.
L-R : David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, Elvis, Al Pachuki, Jerry Carrigan, Felton Jarvis, Chip Young, Charlie McCoy, and James Burton. June 1970.
Other artists briggs worked with include Dean Martin, Joan Baez, Nancy Sinatra, B.B. King, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Tony Joe White, George Harrison, Todd Rundgren, Roy Orbison, The Monkees, J. J. Cale, Kris Kristofferson, Alice Cooper, Gary Stewart, Charley Pride, and many others.
In 1969, Briggs and Putnam opened Quadraphonic Sound, a much-in-demand studio that hosted projects by Neil Young, Dan Fogelberg, Jimmy Buffett and the Jacksons. Briggs joined Area Code 615 (from 1969-1971), a supergroup of session musicians, including Putnam and the guitarist Mac Gayden, who died April 2025. The band released a pair of albums of freewheeling country rock on Polydor Records.
Briggs and Putnam also founded their own publishing company, Danor Music, which had success with No. 1 pop hits like Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” and Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Almost Have It All.” The two men sold Quadraphonic Sound in 1979, but Briggs opened another studio, House of David, three years later. The Blasters, Norah Jones, Bootsy Collins and the indie-rock band Yo La Tengo were among House of David’s numerous clients, along with B.B. King, for whom Mr. Briggs wrote arrangements.
Briggs would go on to play everything from the funky organ on Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” to the pealing barroom piano on Conway Twitty’s honky-tonk weeper “The Image of Me.” He provided empathetic accompaniment on Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” a No. 1 country and Top 10 pop hit in 1971, and Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” which was also a Top 10 country single that year.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Briggs began writing and arranging (and sometimes singing) jingles for Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken and other products. In 1988, he became the music director for the Country Music Association’s annual television awards show, a position he held until 2001. Briggs was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and along with Putnam, Jerry Carrigan and the guitarist Terry Thompson, Briggs was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2019. He remained active as a musician and studio owner well into his 70s.
Briggs died from complications of renal cancer in a Nashville hospice facility, on April 22, 2025, at the age of 82.
(Edited from an obit by Bill Friskics- Warren @ The New York Times & Wikipedia)
Tommy McLain (March 15, 1940 – July 24, 2025) was an American musician, best known as a singer but who also played keyboards, drums, bass guitar, and fiddle.
Thomas Murray McLain was born in Jonesville, Louisiana. He began playing guitar when he was five years old, and would in time add keyboards, drums, bass, and fiddle to his repertoire. When the upbeat sounds of rock & roll began to take root in New Orleans thanks to artists like Fats Domino and Little Richard, McLain became an immediate fan, and he got his start as a performer in Red Smiley's group the Vel-Tones, alongside country singer turned fellow swamp pop legend Clint West. In the early '60s, McLain followed West into the Boogie Kings, local legends in Louisiana, and the association helped him land booking on Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars tours. McLain made his recording debut in 1964 with Clint West & the Boogie Kings on the single "Mr. Jeweler (I Won't Be Needing the Ring)" b/w "Try to Find Another Man." (McLain also landed a job as a radio DJ on KREH in Oakdale, Louisiana.)
His first solo effort, "You Wouldn't Know a Love If You Had One" b/w "If You Would Be True," was released by the small MSL label in 1966 (McLain co-wrote the B-side), and a few months later, the same label brought out his cover of "Sweet Dreams." (Once again, one of McLain's tunes, "I Need You So," was on the flipside.) The song took off in Louisiana and followed suit in the rest of the United States, in time rising to number 15 on the national singles charts, higher than Don Williams or Patsy Cline fared with their versions on the pop survey.
Despite the success of "Sweet Dreams" (which went on to sell three million copies), McLain and MSL were not able to come up with another nationwide hit, though he would have regional success with "Before I Grow Too Old," "I Need You So," "Try to Find Another Man," and "No Tomorrows Now." McLain continued to record occasionally, and performed regularly with his group the Mule Train Band; he and the group made a brief appearance in the 1975 Paul Newman vehicle The Drowning Pool. By his own admission, as his career was almost entirely dominated by live work in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, he developed a dangerous appetite for alcohol and drugs. He experienced a spiritual rebirth, and credited his new faith with helping him turn his back on his bad habits.
In 1973, Charlie Gillett, a British writer and radio host, compiled an album of classic swamp pop tracks, Another Saturday Night: Classic Recordings from the Louisiana Bayous, which featured several McLain numbers, including "Before I Grow Too Old," and the album developed a powerful reputation among U.K. music fans, and both Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe became McLain followers after discovering the disc, later getting to know the man personally. (Another British fan was Lily Allen, who not only cited "Before I Grow Too Old" as one of her eight favourite songs on the BBC Radio 4 program Desert Island Discs, but hired McLain and his band to perform the song at her wedding in 2011.)
The Louisiana guitarist, songwriter, and producer C.C. Adcock, whose father was a Tommy McLain fan after seeing him play with the Boogie Kings in the 1960s -- became friends with McLain in the 1990s, and included him in his ad hoc band of Louisiana legends, Lil' Band O' Gold, who cut a pair of albums in 2000 and 2010. Adcock encouraged McLain to focus on song writing, and as he was growing tired of his usual gigs in clubs and casinos, he was eager to explore new options. In October 2007, McLain was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. In 2019, an A&R rep from Decca Records heard rough demos of McLain's new songs during a meeting at the South by Southwest Conference, and declared the label's interest in a new Tommy McLain album. Both Costello and Lowe were eager to write songs with McLain, and the former offered to sing on the recording sessions.
A variety of calamities interfered with the progress of the project as an arsonist burned down McLain's home, he suffered a life-threatening heart attack that required cardiac surgery, and the COVID-19 pandemic forced McLain and Adcock to put the sessions on hold for nearly a year. In time, the album was completed, and while Decca opted not to release it, the American roots music label Yep Roc stepped in to bring it out. Featuring instrumental contributions from Van Dyke Parks, Ivan Neville, swamp pop star Warren Storm, Willie Nelson harmonica master Mickey Raphael, and Sir Douglas Quintet and Texas Tornados keyboard player Augie Meyers, I Ran Down Every Dream was released in August 2022. McLain supported the release with a number of live dates, including an appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, several dates opening for Lucinda Williams, and a tour with Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets.
On August 26, 2022, McLain released his first album in over 40 years, entitled I Ran Down Every Dream. This collaboration included 11 songs written by McLain and credits with numerous others including Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe (both of whom contribute co-writes), plus Jon Cleary, Denny Freeman, Ed Harcourt, Roy Lowe, Augie Meyers, Ivan Neville, Van Dyke Parks, Mickey Raphael, Steve Riley, Speedy Sparks, Warren Storm and others. In 2023, McLain began work on a gospel album that would share his deeply held spiritual beliefs within the context of swamp pop. The long-gestating project finally saw the light of day with the release of 2024's Moving to Heaven, with McLain playing all the instruments himself and production assistance from his long-time partner Carol Skaggs. It proved to be his last major project -- Tommy McLain died in a nursing facility in Hessmer, Louisiana on July 24, 2025, at the age of 85.
