Paul Davis, Steve Cropper, Pat Alger and (Would You Beleive) Stephen Foster Named to Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame

The Nashville Songwriter's Hall of Fame announced their inductees for their 40th Anniversary Dinner and Induction Ceremony.  The writers will be honored on Sunday, October 17.

The new members are (with biographical information courtesy of the Hall):

• Pat Alger was born in Long Island City, N.Y., but was raised in his mother’s birthplace of LaGrange, Ga.  While in college in the ’60s, Pat started writing songs and performing at Atlanta folk clubs.  Moving to Woodstock, N.Y. in the ’70s, he made three albums with the Woodstock Mountain Revue for Rounder Records and a duet album with guitarist Artie Traum.  Pat had his first hit with Folk-Pop artist Livingston Taylor (First Time Love) in 1980, then decided to move to Nashville.  Slowly, established artists like Mickey Gilley, Dolly Parton, Brenda Lee and the Everly Brothers began to record his material, followed by new artists like Kathy Mattea (Goin’ Gone and She Came From Fort Worth), Nanci Griffith (Lone Star State Of Mind) and Hal Ketchum (Small Town Saturday Night).  Pat’s songwriting collaborations with Garth Brooks yielded four #1 records for him (The Thunder Rolls, Unanswered Prayers, What She’s Doing Now and That Summer), as well as the Trisha Yearwood hit Like We Never Had A Broken Heart.  In 1991, Pat was named NSAI Songwriter of the Year. In 1992, he was ASCAP’s Country Songwriter of the Year. 

• Rising to prominence in the studios of Memphis, Missouri native Steve Cropper’s first successes were instrumentals he wrote for his bands The Mar-Keys and Booker T. & The MGs.  Steve became the “house” guitarist at Stax Records and was soon contributing to hits by Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding.  Steve’s classics include (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay, In The Midnight Hour, Green Onions, Knock on Wood, See Saw, 634-5789 (Soulsville, USA) and Time Is Tight.  These were all Pop and R&B hits that have been frequently covered by Nashville artists.  In the 1970s, Steve recorded and toured with Levon Helm and The Blues Brothers.  He moved to Nashville in 1988.  Along with the other MGs, he was inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.  In 2008, he teamed up with fellow Nashvillian Felix Cavaliere to record Nudge It Up a Notch, which was nominated for a Grammy and consists of recent songs the two co-wrote.

• The late Paul Davis (1948-2008) was a native of Meridian, Miss. who achieved fame both as a hit vocalist and a hit songwriter.  Beginning his career as an R&B songwriter in Jackson, Miss. at Malaco Records, Paul was later discovered by producer/songwriter Bert Berns and signed as an artist to Berns’ Bang Records in 1969.  Between 1970 and 1982, Paul had a string of self-penned hits that fared particularly well on the Adult Contemporary charts:  I Go Crazy, Sweet Life and Do Right.  Signing with Arista Records in 1981, his successes continued with Cool Night and ’65 Love Affair.  In 1984, Paul decided to pursue songwriting full-time in Nashville, where he scored hits with Dan Seals (Bop and Meet Me In Montana [duet with Marie Osmond]), Tanya Tucker (Love Me Like You Used To and Down To My Last Teardrop) and Lorrie Morgan (Back In Your Arms Again).  Though not a prolific writer, a strikingly high percentage of Paul’s songs became enormously successful throughout the 1980s and 1990s.  He died suddenly of a heart attack on April 22, 2008, the day after his 60th birthday.

• Nashville’s songwriters trace their professional lineage back to Stephen Foster (1826-1864), widely regarded as America’s first professional songwriter.  Though most of his songs were no doubt composed during the last two decades of his 38-year life, Foster’s copyrights continue to endure nearly 150 years after his death – national standards such as Beautiful Dreamer, Camptown Races, Hard Times Come Again No More, Jeanie With The Light Brown Hair, My Old Kentucky Home, Oh! Susanna and Old Folks At Home, perhaps better known as Way Down Upon The Swanee River.  Two of his songs have been named official state songs -- My Old Kentucky Home for Kentucky; Old Folks At Home for Florida. 
  
  Foster not only struggled to support his family by writing songs as a vocation, he established the very idea that writing songs full-time could be a vocation.  Foster sold his early songs outright for a few dollars apiece.  Once he was established as a songwriter, the Pennsylvania native was able to bargain for what are known as royalties today, payment for the sale of each piece of sheet music.  This marked a turning point for songwriters, which was later cemented with the passage of the 1909 copyright law.
   
  Though Foster died before the end of the Civil War with a scrap of lyric and fewer than 50 cents in his pocket, his songs have been covered by a Who’s Who of music legends, among them The Beatles, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, even Spike Jones.  Nashville particularly has been well represented in Foster’s catalogue thanks to numerous recordings from luminaries such as Chet Atkins, Gene Autry, David Ball, Suzy Bogguss, Johnny Cash, Floyd Cramer, Crystal Gayle, Don Gibson, Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, Grandpa Jones, Alison Krauss, Jerry Lee Lewis, Raul Malo, Roy Orbison, John Prine, Charlie Rich, Marty Robbins, Hank Snow, The Oak Ridge Boys, The Sons of the Pioneers, Porter Wagoner and Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. 

Roger Murrah, chairman of the Hall, said "Pat, Steve, Paul and certainly Mr. Foster have all written remarkable songs that we’ve lived our lives by through the years, and all of them are so deserving as Hall of Fame inductees.  Stephen Foster was writing songs before we even had genres."