Larry Jon Wilson obituary | Music

Larry Jon Wilson obituary

My friend, the musician Larry Jon Wilson, who has died aged 71, was that rarest of things: an honest man in a profession built on glamour. A favourite of Nashville's leading singer-songwriters, from Willie Nelson to Kris Kristofferson and Will Oldham, he never achieved their commercial success. One of the first things he told me, in his sandpaper southern drawl, was: "Every time a record company comes calling, the buzzards start circling the house."

Larry Jon was born in Georgia and went to military school there: an experience, he said, that failed to damage him too severely. He attended the University of Georgia, and in the late 60s and early 70s lived in Florida. It was in the Coconut Grove neighbourhood of Miami, watching the singer-songwriter Fred Neil, that he decided to follow a career in music.

He liked to say he was born in 1975, the year he gave up his job selling boat varnish and landed in Nashville. He quickly became known as a singer and writer of intensely private, painfully moving tales of southern life. He signed to Monument Records and his first album, New Beginnings, proved a revelation among the hipsters and critics of Nashville.

When a film crew came to document country music's burgeoning "outlaw movement", they made straight for Larry Jon's door. The film Heartworn Highways (1981) featured his mesmerising performance of Ohoopee River Bottomland. During these years, Larry Jon and Townes van Zandt lived and toured together.

He made four records for Monument, each bearing his unique mix of country, folk and soul. Too funky for the country crowd, too heartfelt for pop radio, he fell between the cracks. "I never stopped," he told me, "I just downsized. Made my way to the Gulf coast and said forget it. I didn't want to be part of a business where lawyers earned more than the artists they represented."

In 2003, I put together a compilation entitled Country Got Soul for the London-based label Casual Records. Larry Jon's gothic funk song Sheldon Church Yard was the first track. In the album's liner notes, Kristofferson observed: "He can break your heart with a voice like a cannonball."

Larry Jon later played with the Country Soul Revue on the album Testifying. In 2007, 1965 Records finally convinced him to make a new record. I flew to Florida and spent 10 days in the capricious company of Larry Jon, listening to endless stories, driving around the sleepy back roads of Perdido Key and sitting on darkened porches watching the ocean. Occasionally, if we were lucky, we recorded a song or two.

The resulting self-titled CD, which I co-produced, was released in 2008 and collected a stack of five-star reviews. Larry Jon came to London that summer and played a series of sold-out shows. Among his admirers was Charlie Gillett. "Just when you think you've heard it all," he told me, "you hear Larry Jon."

He is survived by three children, Kimberley, Chatham and Tyler, from a marriage which ended in divorce; Elizabeth Dalenberg, whom he raised; his brother, Billy Joe; four grandchildren, Amanda, Jamie, Crystal and Graham; and his many fans.

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