DAVE'S DIARY - 14 SEPTEMBER 2004 - L E WHITE RIP
L
E WHITE RIP AT 74
When prolific hit writer L E White died at 74 on September 7 it was the
end of an era - for back-room chart spinners known by their initials.
Sure, K D Lang has done it but fans knew her name was Kathy Dawn.
But singer-songwriter White went to his grave in Nashville on September
10 as not so plain old L.E. White.
White won BMI Awards for After The Fire Is Gone and I Love You
More Today - two of the 186 songs attributed to him on the major publisher's
web page.
After The Fire Is Gone won a 1971 Grammy for the late Conway Twitty
and Loretta Lynn.
Freddy Fender, Willie Nelson, Tracy Nelson, Ricky Lynn Gregg and many
other artists also cut it.
The late Patsy Cline and Twitty also recorded I Love You More Today.
TWITTY HIT CITY
 Conway Twitty |
White
was born in Blaine, Tennessee, and died in Hendersonville - the Nashville
suburb that was home for peers including the late John and June Carter
Cash, Johnny Russell, Bobby Bare and many more. White spent his early career as a musician and singer with Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys and Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper's Clinch Mountain Clan. In 1977, he and singing partner Lola Jean Dillon charted twice for Epic Records with Home, Sweet Home/ It's Almost As Cold Outside and novelty tune, You're The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly. The latter was a hit for Twitty and Lynn in the seventies and topped European charts in the new millennium for Kacey Jones and Texan Delbert McClinton. |
Jones, former
lead singer for Ethel & The Shameless Hussies, has also recorded a
brace of solo discs and produced the Kinky Friedman disc Pearls In
The Snow.
White's songs I Love You More Today and To See My Angel Cry
provided Twitty with back-to-back No. 1 singles in 1969.
Twitty also scored a #3 hit on April 4, 1974, with a co-write with White
on I'm Not Through Loving You Yet.
Other songs in his catalogue included To See An Angel Cry, cut
by Twitty, After Five Affair and Home Is Where The Heartache
Is.
|
Another was Up Comes The Bottle Down Goes - penned with Twitty under Conway's real name Harold Jenkins. White
and Dillon also wrote We're Caught Between Love And A Love Affair
for Conway and Loretta and Bring Back The Arms It Came In
for T Jae Christian. |
 Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn |
MICHAEL WHITE
White helped
establish and administer the Twitty publishing companies Hello Darling
Music and Twitty Bird Music.
White is the father of Michael White, who recorded for Reprise Records
in the early 1990s.
Michael's 1992 disc Familiar Ground featured six of his original
tunes including the title track and One Of My Near Mrs penned by
Craig Wiseman and Dave Gibson of the Gibson-Miller Band.
His father L E White joined Lenny LeBlanc, Robert Byrne, Mac McAnally,
Curtis Young and Cindy Richardson-Walker as harmony singers on the album.
Among the steel guitar players on the disc are Bruce Bouton and Duncan
Cameron who made his name with Amazing Rhythm Aces and Sawyer Brown.