Griffin, Yancey and Guilbeau
This is from Drew Reid:
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Here is Drew's piece. The second section, on Nanci Griffith, has been deleted, but the title remains:
Griffin And Griffith
The music business is not for everyone.
If you’re an artist, you must also be a businessperson. If you’re involved with the business end of it, you have to think creatively and be able to deal with artistic personalities.
It calls for a lifetime of endless practice and rehearsals, frequent baring of your soul to total strangers, constant travel, destruction of personal relationships and subsequent loneliness, and economic hardship, for starters.
So why would anyone aspire to such a life?
Well, on the upside, you make people happy, you have your creative outlets justified, you learn discipline (in theory), you can make wonderful friends and partners, and you can see the world; again, for starters. Also, there is no greater feeling than knowing that a piece of work that began in your mind and soul was given birth and got reactions from people that made a hopeful, positive difference in their lives.
In short, you can leave the world a better place than you found it, and that should be the goal of any and everyone, regardless of your field of endeavor.
There’s no finer feeling than someone coming up and saying “I fell in love to your music” or “We had such a great time when we saw you before, we just had to come back.”
Jimmy Griffin was born in Cincinnati but raised in Memphis. His friends and neighbors were early rockabilly pioneers The Burnette Brothers, who struck music gold in California in the 1950’s. He visited them in Hollywood in 1962 and never looked back.
After signing a record deal with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise record label, making several albums and appearing in some small movie and TV roles, he and Robb Royer founded Bread, the romantic soft-rock group. Shortly thereafter, they brought in David Gates who proceeded to go on one of the great songwriting rolls of all time, and Bread took off. From 1968 through the mid 70’s Bread toured the world, charted many Top Ten hits and sold upwards of 50 million records. Their signature sound was easy going yet highly original and inventive songs, tight harmonies and instrumental perfection. We can only imagine how many high school proms and lover’s lanes echoed the strains of Baby I’m-a Want You or The Guitar Man. Bread inspired countless fans who remained loyal even after the break-up and who turned out in droves for their world reunion tour in 1997. Great songs like If, It Don’t Matter To Me and Everything I Own are heard on radio and other forms of media to this day.
Unlike sundry other rock icons who either fade away or become caricatures of themselves, there was life after Bread for Jimmy Griffin. Relocating to Nashville, he continued his songwriting and turned out hits for Conway Twitty (Who’s Gonna Know) and Restless Heart (the #1 You Can Depend On Me). There was a short lived trio Black Tie in the mid 80’s with Billy Swan (I Can Help) and original Eagle Randy Meisner, and in the 1990’s Jimmy was one-third of The Remingtons with Rick Yancey and Richard Maneigra, charting more Top Ten hits like A Long Time Ago and Two-Timin’ Me on BNA Records.
Jimmy was a class act. No matter whether he was on top or working his way back up in the cyclical music world, he always carried himself as if everything was going his way. A tireless perfectionist in his music, he was also a warm, engaging person, gracious to friends and strangers alike. Jimmy was someone who enjoyed life and lived it to the fullest, so it was especially tragic when he succumbed to cancer several weeks ago at age 61.
It was this reporter’s great privilege and learning experience to know and work with Jimmy Griffin the past couple of years. Jimmy’s longtime friend and singing partner the aforementioned Rick Yancey is a buddy of mine. He approached me to listen to the newest musical project he and Jimmy were doing and consider coming on board as manager and promoter. There was a CD in the can, and they were ready to form the band apparatus and see if they could get a break and a deal one more time in “The Biz.”
The trio was Griffin, Yancey and Guilbeau. Rick Yancey is another Memphian and well-known songwriter and consummate studio singer, working with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Lorrie Morgan and Willie Nelson, among others. Besides The Remingtons, he was a member of Cymarron (Rings) and a host of other lesser known but well beloved Memphis bands. Ronnie Guilbeau comes from the Southern California school of country-rock that spawned The Byrds, Linda Ronstadt, Buffalo Springfield and The Flying Burrito Brothers, of whom he was a member. He’s a prolific songwriter as well, with hits by, among others, Poco, John Berry and Cheley Wright.
GYG as they were known, produced a CD of flawless harmonies textured over strong material from the careers of the three and some new stuff. I was convinced to work with them when I attended one of their first shows and was stunned by the fact that their harmonies were so tight I could NOT tell who was singing what, looking right at them from my front row seat. The last guys I recall being that good was a little combo called Crosby, Stills and Nash in 1969.
So, we tried to get the ball rolling. I pitched the CD to various labels. We did shows around town, including The Bluebird Café and Douglas Corner, both famous venues where people go to hopefully launch “the buzz”. We played last year’s Country Radio Seminar to great acclaim and were slowly building some momentum despite Music Row’s fixation with young hard bodies playing saccharine pseudo-country. The majors aren’t the only way to fly, and Nashville is about a lot more than just the mainstream.
The act also had great respect amongst their peers. Attendance at some shows was a sampling of the cream of Nashville’s songwriting community, plus many, many stars of rock and country past and present. I saw and met people whose records I had grown up with. It was a thrill.
Likewise, it was great fun. I had rarely been around creative people of this caliber who made such wonderful music and made it look so easy. I can still see Jimmy singing as he paced up and down the studio where they rehearsed, or with head thrown back, eyes closed, belting it out at the top of his lungs, a beatific smile on his face. The other two usually sat as they played guitars, but Jimmy was almost manic in his energy. He’d leap up, spread his arms, take another lap around the room, grab a guitar, all with uncontainable joy to be creating this beautiful music with his bros.
One time they were circled up working out the set for an upcoming show when Jimmy called an abrupt halt.
“What was that?” he said.
“Uh, that was a bad note, man.”
“We don’t DO bad notes!”
You had to love the guy.
Late last summer, Jimmy came down with laryngitis and we had to cancel some shows. When the laryngitis didn’t go away, he went for more tests and the cancer was discovered. We all figured if anyone could fight this sort of thing it was Jimmy, because he was very health-conscious and had such a strong spirit and love for life. He made a tremendous effort, and everyone was cautiously optimistic at the initial progress. But sometimes no matter how willing the spirit, the laws of nature prevail over the flesh. From diagnosis to conclusion was just over four months.
Some people make such an impact it’s almost incalculable to estimate the width and depth of the holes left in so many lives.
We used to speculate on how many kids were conceived to the music of Bread. Jimmy was a man of the world. He knew the best restaurants in Europe and the coolest tacquerias in Nashville. He was a true original. You could compare his voice somewhat to Sam Cooke’s, but I don’t believe he really had any influences; it all came out of him.
He had a unique, meticulous guitar style and was an accomplished pianist, though he just played piano at home. He won an Oscar in 1970 for Best Song (For All We Know from the movie Lovers And Other Strangers) beating out Henry Mancini and the rest of Hollywood’s best. When Bread reunited for the world tour in 1997, he got to meet millions of fans in the Far East and Australia.
As I was sitting in a restaurant not long ago a Bread song came on the Muzak, and I can positively attest that he was singing better at 60 than he was at 30. Not many people can say that.
Jimmy was loved and admired everywhere he went. He was a great family man, a strong presence in his church, and as noted, had the healthy respect of his peers and co-workers in a tough, tough business where such respect is rarely given or expressed. Yet it was easy to say great things about Jimmy, because he was that kind of person.
Ultimately, he contributed to society. He made people happy. He left a tremendous body of excellent work and he left the world a better place than he found it.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
I’ll let you know when the GYG CD comes out; you’ll love it. In the meantime, put on some Bread, snuggle with your sweetie, and send up a prayer for Jimmy’s family and friends. We should all be grateful to have had him, even if it wasn’t for long enough.