Nanci Caroline Griffith (July 6, 1953 – August 13, 2021) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter.[1] She often appeared on the PBS music program Austin City Limits, starting in 1985 during season 10. In 1994, Griffith won a Grammy Award for the album Other Voices, Other Rooms.[2]
Griffith's career spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country, folk, and what she termed "folkabilly."[1] She won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her 1993 recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms.[3] The album features Griffith covering the songs of artists who were her major influences. One of her better-known songs is "From a Distance," which was written and composed by Julie Gold. Similarly, other artists have occasionally achieved greater success than Griffith herself with songs that she wrote or co-wrote. For example, Kathy Mattea had a country music top-five hit with a 1986 cover of Griffith's "Love at the Five and Dime" and Suzy Bogguss had one of her largest hits with Griffith (and Tom Russell)'s "Outbound Plane".[4][citation needed]
Griffith, the youngest of three siblings, was born in Seguin, Texas, and grew up in Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, where her family moved shortly after her birth.[6][7][8] Her mother Ruelene was a real estate agent and amateur actress; her father, Marlin Griffith, was a printer, publisher, graphic artist and barbershop quartet singer.[9][10][11] Griffith began her music career at age 12, singing in a local coffeehouse.[10] When she was a teenager, her father took her to see Townes Van Zandt. At 14, she performed her first professional gig at the Red Lion Cabaret in downtown Austin.[12]
Griffith went to the University of Texas at Austin and got a degree in education. She taught kindergarten and first grade for a couple of years, before fully dedicating to music.
Career
Independent labels (1978-1986)
Her debut album, There's a Light Beyond These Woods, was released in 1978; the cover was designed by her father. The second album, Poet in My Window, was released in 1982. Both albums were folk-oriented and released on small labels.
Griffith signed to MCA Records and moved to Nashville; the first album for MCA was country-oriented Lone Star State of Mind, which included two songs, "Trouble in the Fields", co-written by Griffith, and "From a Distance", written by then unknown songwriter Julie Gold. These songs became popular in Ireland, and both have been covered by many singers. It was followed by Little Love Affairs, featuring "Outbound Plane" which later became a hit for Suzy Bogguss. In 1988, Griffith released One Fair Summer Evening, a live album recorded in Anderson Fair in Houston.
Griffith transferred to the MCA pop division and recorded Storms, which included a song she considered the most important she wrote, "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go", about conflict in Northern Ireland and racism in the US.
In 1990, Griffith appeared on the Channel 4 program Town & Country with John Prine in a segment entitled "White Pants", where she wore white pants at the Bluebird Café in Nashville, Tennessee, along with Buddy Mondlock, Barry "Byrd" Burton, and Robert Earl Keen.
In 1993, Griffith released the album Other Voices, Other Rooms, which won her first and only Grammy award. The album featured songs by various folk and country songwriters, and a large group of musicians, from Bob Dylan to Odetta. The album was certified gold by RIAA in 2005, more than a decade after it was released.[13]
In 1994, she released the album Flyer, which received another Grammy nomination.
Christine Lavin, a singer and songwriter, remembers the first time she saw Griffith perform:
I was struck by how perfect everything was about her singing, her playing, her talking. I realized from the get-go that this was someone who was a complete professional. Obviously she had worked a long time to get to be that good.[16]
In late 1990's she wrote a letter to a number of Texas media, frustrated with reviews[17]
Griffith contributed background vocals on many other recordings.[18]
Griffith performed four songs, "The Day the Earth Stopped Cold", "Gravity of the Situation", "So Strange", and "Hold My Hand" with Hootie & the Blowfish during their MTV Unplugged performance in 1996 in Columbia, South Carolina, to raise awareness for Sweet Relief Musicians Fund.
Griffith suffered from severe writer's block after 2004, lasting until the 2009 release of her The Loving Kind album, which contained nine selections that she had written and composed either entirely by herself or as collaborations.[19] After several months of limited touring in 2011, Griffith's bandmates the Kennedys (Pete & Maura Kennedy) packed up their professional Manhattan recording studio and moved it to Nashville, installing it in Griffith's home. There with her backing group including the Kennedys and Pat McInerney, she co-produced her album Intersection over the summer. The album included several new original songs and was released in April 2012 on Proper Records.[20] Her website lists live performances through 2013.[21]
Griffith was posthumously inducted into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Association's Hall of Fame in February 2022 at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.[27][28][29]
The Blue Moon Orchestra
Griffith called her backing band the Blue Moon Orchestra. With regard to the chosen stage name, she wrote:
During the Christmas holidays of 1986, I organized a band of musicians to work this road of touring and to pass effortlessly through mine fields of studio sessions. They chose their name, the Blue Moon Orchestra, from my third album, Once in a Very Blue Moon. Some of them I had recorded and toured with prior to 1986: and some simply wandered into the Blue Moon Orchestra through this revolving open door of the road.
The title selection of the Once in a Very Blue Moon album reached number 85 on the BillboardHot Country Songs chart in 1986.[30][31] In 1986, Griffith showcased tracks from her Lone Star State of Mind album on The Nashville Network TV show, New Country.
Griffith's high-school boyfriend, John, died in a motorcycle accident shortly after taking her to the senior prom. He inspired many of her later songs.[8] She was married to singer-songwriter Eric Taylor from 1976 to 1982. In the early 1990s, she was engaged to singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel.[33]
Political views and activism
Griffith was outspoken in her political views, supporting liberal, pacifist[34] and left policies. She was "a total abolitionist on the death penalty" and wrote a song, "Not Innocent Enough", which appeared on her album The Loving Kind in 2009.
Her song "It's a Hard Life Wherever You Go" addressed the Troubles in Northern Ireland and racism in the United States.
Together with Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell and other artists, she was a member of Music Row Democrats, an organization promoting Democratic Party candidates in Nashville.[35] She also supported Barack Obama and said, after he was elected: "the election [of Barack Obama] brought out the acceptance of hope and a new direction. When I went to Europe, I wasn't embarrassed about my country."[36]
For years, Griffith wore buttons with political messages on her guitar strap, most often buttons from the Lyndon Johnson presidential campaign.[37]
Griffith died in Nashville on August 13, 2021, at the age of 68. The exact cause of death was not reported[38][4] but her management company attributed it to natural causes.[39]
^"Biography". Archived from the original on January 13, 2007. Retrieved January 13, 2007. originating from nancigriffith.com Retrieved January 31, 2013
^"Her songs were an extension of her literary interests – she wrote long-form and short-form fiction that sometimes became songs, and vice versa – and when songs wouldn't come (she suffered from songwriter's block between 2004 and 2009), she would use prose to try and keep the words flowing." Obituary: Nanci Griffith, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, by Rob Adams, heraldscotland.com, August 16, 2021
^Noble, Richard E. (2009). Number No. 1 : the story of the original Highwaymen. Denver: Outskirts Press. pp. 265–267. ISBN9781432738099. OCLC426388468.
^"Doster played guitar on Griffith's first album in 1978, and joined her in Nashville for her third, “Once In A Very Blue Moon,” six years later. By then, Griffith had a record deal with folk label Rounder, and a lot of friends and musical collaborators to call on. Her acoustic sound had been amped up a notch, with stalwart Nashville players like Béla Fleck, Roy Huskey Jr. and Mark O’Connor – and a lanky guy she knew from the Texas music scene named Lyle Lovett, singing harmony." in: Remembering Nanci Griffith: ‘She Was Just A Good, Good, Good Songwriter’, by Shelly Brisbin, texasstandard.org, August 16, 2021
^"Griffith didn't write the title song from Once In A Very Blue Moon, but she made the Pat Alger tune her own – so much so that the band she formed in the late 1980s, and toured with for 20 years, was called the Blue Moon Orchestra." in: "Remembering Nanci Griffith: 'She Was Just A Good, Good, Good Songwriter'", by Shelly Brisbin, texasstandard.org, August 16, 2021
^"From that point on, Griffith named every band she fronted, big or small, the Blue Moon Orchestra. The clear desire, I assume, was to honor and recall that album's familial spirit. The core of the band stayed with her for the long haul." in: "Music Remembrance: Singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith (1953-2021)", by Daniel Gewertz, artsfuse.org, September 14, 2021
^"From those early Kerrville campfires to her angelic harmonizing with Nanci Griffith and that classic unreleased tape with Mickie Merkens...to crowded folk venues from Texas to Switzerland, Denice Franke's music has always moved me. She's a deeply talented writer, singer, and guitarist. One of Texas' finest." --- Tom Russell | Source: denicefranke.com
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