Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell is a country and folk singer-songwriter from Crosby, United States, born in 1950. He is associated with both alternative country and mainstream country music, and he first comes to wider attention through three years as a guitarist and singer in Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band. He is also a member of The Notorious Cherry Bombs, The Cicadas, Los Super Seven and The Dixie Pearls.

Career

Crowell develops a reputation as a songwriter and later as a solo artist with a run of critically regarded albums in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is influenced by Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, alongside contemporaries such as Steve Earle. His mainstream breakthrough arrives with Diamonds and Dirt, which produces five No. 1 hits over a 17-month period: “It’s Such a Small World”, “I Couldn’t Leave You If I Tried”, “She’s Crazy for Leaving”, “After All This Time” and “Above and Beyond”. Its follow-up, Keys to the Highway, yields two top-five hits in 1990: “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway” and “If Looks Could Kill”.

Songwriting and collaborations

Crowell is married to Rosanne Cash from 1979 to 1992 and has a major influence on her career, producing most of her albums during that period. He and Cash also record duets together, including “It’s Such a Small World”, and continue to perform together occasionally after their divorce. He later marries Claudia Church. His work also includes a duet with Johnny Cash, his former father-in-law, on “I Walk the Line (Revisited)”. Cash initially dislikes the changed tune but later comes to appreciate the finished version.

Later albums and other work

As his commercial profile in mainstream country declines, Crowell continues writing prolifically. The Houston Kid appears on Sugar Hill Records in 2001 and includes several semi-autobiographical songs. He follows it with Fate’s Right Hand in 2003 and The Outsider in 2005; he regards these three albums as his best solo work. In 2004 he records with The Notorious Cherry Bombs, a reunion of a group that first appears briefly in the 1970s and includes Vince Gill, Tony Brown and others. That release includes “Making Memories of Us”, later a hit for Keith Urban. In 2005 he produces Blue Sky Sunrise for Irish singer-songwriter Kieran Goss.