Larry Cordle to Perform at Spirit of 76 Celebration

Larry Cordle was born in Louisa, Kentucky and grew up near the neighboring small community of Cordell. As a young child he was introduced to bluegrass, country and gospel music by his great\-grandfather, Harry Bryant, an old-time claw hammer banjo stylist, fiddle player and dancer.

“Mom said I could sing 'I’ll Fly Away' all the way through when I was two years old!” Cordle fondly remembers on his website, recalling his grandfather's influence. “We lived so far away from everything that we had to make our own entertainment. Papaw would get the fiddle out in the evenings sometimes and play and dance for us. Just as soon as I was old enough to try to learn to play, I did so and kinda seconded after him on the guitar. He ran an old country store and I spent many happy hours in there with him playing, talking about and listening to music. It was our escape into another world, something we grew up with and looked so forward to. I was always happiest when we were in a jam session.”

After graduating from high school, Cordle spent four years in the Navy, was honorably discharged and attended Morehead State University, earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “I just didn’t see how I could ever make a living doing only music,” he explains, “so I worked for a CPA firm during the day and played in clubs at night.” All the while, he desperately wanted to devote all of his time to music, but his commitments would remain divided, until writing a song that changed everything for the aspiring singer-songwriter.

Cordle's childhood friend and neighbor, musical prodigy Ricky Skaggs, heard Cordle’s “Highway 40 Blues” and promised that he would record it one day. In the summer of 1983, it was the No. 1 country song in the nation, helping launch Larry’s songwriting career and skyrocketing Skaggs’ already solid music career. “A lot of people who hear it think it's about Interstate 40, which runs through Nashville, but I actually wrote it about that little state highway in Kentucky,” which runs from Salyersville through Paintsville and Inez to the West Virginia border, almost touching Lawrence County.

Cordle's best known song is “Murder On Music Row,” co-written with Larry Shell in 1999 as a complaint against the rise of “country pop” music. It was first recorded by his bluegrass group, Lonesome Standard Time, as the title track of an album, and gained its greatest fame when it was recorded as a duet by George Strait and Alan Jackson, reaching No. 38 on the country singles chart even though it was never officially released as a single. Cordle’s songs have also been recorded by Alison Krauss, Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood.

The original version of “Murder On Music Row” won Song of the Year at the 2000 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. It was the second such award for Cordle; in 1993, the Lonesome Standard Time band won IBMA Song of the Year for “Lonesome Standard Time,” written by Cordle and Jim Rushing.

Cordle shared in a Grammy Award with friends Carl Jackson and Jerry Salley for the song "You’re Running Wild" on Livin', Lovin', Losin': Songs of the Louvin Brothers, a project that featured numerous country music stars singing songs made famous by the legendary duo. It won the 2004 Grammy for Country Album of the Year. Cordle has played on several other collaborative albums and singles, including the 2022 Gospel Music Association Dove Award-winning song, “The Sweet By and By,” with Jackson, Salley, Dolly Parton and Bradley Walker. He has provided harmony vocals for artists such as Brooks, Blake Shelton and many more. At last count, Cordle’s songs had appeared on projects that had sold a combined total of more than 55 million records.

In April 2015, Larry Cordle was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame. In 2017, he released an all-gospel album, Give Me Jesus, which received a 2018 Grammy nomination for Best Roots Gospel Album and a 2017 IBMA Gospel Recorded Event of the Year nomination for the title track.

Cordle released one of his best albums to date, “Where The Trees Know My Name,” in 2021. The album produced three hit singles (“Sailor’s Regret,” “Cherokee Fiddle” and “Breakin’ on the Jimmy Ridge”) along with more chart singles “The Devil and Shade Wallen” and “Natural State” on the Bluegrass Today Top 20 song chart.

In 2022 Cordle scored with the release of his song, “East Kentucky Blues,” which reached No. 1 on the Bluegrass Today Top 20 weekly and monthly charts and was named one of the publication’s Top 50 Songs of 2022.

“Cordle remains highly active in all facets of his career,” his official biography says. “He regularly records and performs. He is also still first and foremost a songwriter, now writing independently for his own company, Wandachord Music (BMI). He is a long-time resident of the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, where he lives with his wife Wanda. However, he still enjoys the opportunity to make frequent trips back to his Kentucky home place. Those Eastern Kentucky roots certainly shine through on his award-winning original songs.”

We are proud to welcome Kentuckian Larry Cordle to Seventy Six, Kentucky, and the Spirit of 76 Celebration at the Seventy Six Falls Country Club. Hope to see you there!!

Dick Burnett, the Blind Minstrel of Monticello

"The Farewell Song" was first printed in the songbook, "Songs Sung by R. D. Burnett," a blind man from Monticello, Kentucky, in 1913. You might know the song as "Man of Constant Sorrow," from the 2000 movie, "O Brother Where Art Thou." The film's soundtrack was more successful than the film. "Man of Constant Sorrow," sung in the movie by Dan Tyminski of Alison Krauss and Union Station, won the 2001 CMA award for best single as well as a Grammy Award for best Country Collaboration with Vocals. It was also named Song of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2001.

Dick Burnett is generally considered the author of the song, although he himself wasn't so sure about it. In a 1973 interview, he said, "I think I got it from somebody...I dunno, it may be my song." The composition year is most likely the same as the songbooks' publication year, 1913, judging from the line: "Oh, six long years I've been blind, friends." You see, Burnett was left blind from a gunshot wound in 1907. He was walking home from his job at a barbershop at Stearns one evening, when he was robbed at gunpoint. Rather than lose his money, he rushed the robber and was struck in the face by a shotgun blast.

Burnett, who was born at Elk Springs Valley in 1883, had learned how to play several stringed instruments at an early age; dulcimer, fiddle, banjo, guitar, etc. Unable to work anymore, he decided to become a musician to earn money for his wife and small child. He began traveling from town to town, playing on the street for nickels and dimes with a tin cup tied to his leg (see photo). Usually, he was accompanied by his musical sidekick Leonard Rutherford, who came to live with the Burnett family when only a small boy.

Burnett was willing to teach Rutherford how to play the fiddle if he would help him get around. As Rutherford improved, it became profitable for the two men to branch out, traveling first by horse, bus and railroad. Eventually, Burnett bought a car and Rutherford learned to drive it. In Burnett's words, they travelled "from Cincinnati to Chattanooga, playing every town this side of Nashville."

But, life was hard for them. For that reason, in 1929, Burnett's wife, Georgia, ran for jailer of Wayne County. "I wish to announce myself as a candidate for jailor," she wrote in the Wayne County Outlook. "My husband is a blind man and his only way of supporting his family is by playing music, in which he has found it very difficult to do. For this cause, I am asking the support of all the voters of Wayne County." She did not win.

Burnett and Rutherford recorded several songs for Columbia Records between 1926 and 1928. They recorded "The Farewell Song" in 1927, but the recording was not released and for some reason the master recording was destroyed. Although the song is in his 1913 catalog, it's too bad, he didn't copyright it as his. Imagine how much money could have been earned in his name.

In 2003, “Man of Constant Sorrow” was voted the 20th greatest song of all time in CMT’s 100 Greatest Songs in Country Music.

"I am a man of constant sorrow
I've seen trouble all of my days
I'll bid farewell to old Kentucky
The place where I was born and raised"