Biography
Born on October 7, 1940, in Swainsboro, in Emmanuel County, to Louise Phillips and John Tyler Wilson, Larry Jon Wilson was raised in Augusta, Georgia.
In the 50ies he won the Sancken's Dairy Talent Show on the Miller Theatre stage singing MI-DOUBLE-S-I-DOUBLE-PI. He won a gold watch, a paid trip to Savannah and all the Sancken's ice cream he could eat.
He attended high school at Carlisle Military Academy in Bamberg, South Carolina, before attending the University of Georgia, where he majored in chemistry. From 1963 to 1973 he worked in Langley, South Carolina, for United Merchants and Manufacturers as a technical consultant in fiberglass manufacturing.
"Back then I was making money - now I'm making music." L. J. Wilson
At the age of thirty, Wilson received his first guitar and taught himself to play. Four years later, by then a husband and the father of three children, he decided to try to make his living by making music. In the 2nd half of the 1970s he had 4 great records out on Monument: New Beginnings, Let Me Sing My Song To You, Loose Change and Sojourner.
His compositions reflect his experiences, and many focus on his southern childhood; one writer called them "eloquent, elegiac songs of the South." Of his first album, the critic for the Saturday Review in New York said, "Larry Jon Wilson's New Beginnings is, to sum up, the best thing I have heard in country, rock, pop, or you-name-it for a very long time."
(Cursive captions taken from article in The New Georgia Encyclopedia, written by Lee Ann Cardwell)
Larry Jon Wilson also appeared in the movie Heartworn Highways, filmed in the studio in 1975, recording the self-penned Ohooppee River Bottomland, a funky grooving Southern-BluesRockCountrySoul-Song.
And that was the problem when it came to the business side of Music City: A lot of talent, a wide range of style, he couldn't be put in no drawer and he couldn't be marketed. Kind of like Charlie Rich, if Charlie had never let himself be turned into the Countrypolitan Silver Fox.
"My love for different kinds of music has apparently left the music that I write and perform with no bag to be placed in." L. J. Wilson
For Larry Jon it was no hits, no success, no compromises, and so in 1980, disillusioned, he left the music business and remained obscure, a hidden musical treasure, playing solo live gigs whenever he wanted or when he needed the money.
In 1989 he gave his debut at the Frank Brown International Songwriters Festival, where he would perform for the next 20 years.
Friends and contemporaries like Townes Van Zandt, Mickey Newbury, Billy Joe Shaver, John Prine, Kris Kristofferson and Tony Joe White might have urged him to record again, but he laid back in Augusta, Georgia, mostly, sometimes doing voice-overs for tv and hosting two episodse of GPB's Georgia Legacy series Georgia's Backroads.
Then, at the beginning of the new millenium a couple of his 70s songs appeared on the great samplers Country Got Soul, Volume 1 and 2, and two outstanding new recordings, Sapelo and Friday Night Fight At Al's, on the Dan Penn produced The Country Soul Revue - Testifying in 2004.
This led to new interest in his music and a final album, recorded live in a condo in Florida. It's just him and his guitar, with some violin added here and there. Stripped off all production, just doing what he did live, he Wilsonized every song.
Larry Jon Wilson died following a stroke on June 21, 2010, in Roanoke, Virginia at the age of 69.
Stories in Rhyme - The Songwriters of the Flora-Bama Lounge
A documentary that chronicles the history and character of the legendary country songwriters who flock every year to the Frank Brown International Songwriters’ Festival, held at the famous Flora-Bama Lounge, to tell their stories and bare their souls on the most intimate of stages.
Since 1984, the Gulf of Mexico’s famous Flora-Bama Lounge has played host to a gathering of songwriters from all over the world. From the country legends of old to the latest crop of budding troubadours, these are the voices behind the songs. This documentary isn’t just an ode to these characters, but to the timeless, unifying power of music itself.
Compiled from over thirty years’ worth of rare, never-before-seen footage, Stories in Rhyme is a journey through music history, guided by renowned Nashville music journalist Robert K. Oermann and Joe Gilchrist himself, the “Godfather of the Country Songwriter Festival Movement.” Full of riveting live performances and heartfelt testimonials, the film explores the art form, the inspiration and the camaraderie of these colorful songsters as they gather to tell their stories down on the snow-white beaches of the Florida-Alabama line.
Pictures
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