Scotsman Obituaries: Singer-songwriter behind the 'Southern California sound’

The hirsute and handsome Souther was a solo artist in his own right, releasing albums to acclaim in the Seventies before falling into a parallel acting career with roles in Postcards from the Edge and TV drama thirtysomething and finding late-blooming celebrity playing a version of himself in country music drama series Nashville.

But it was in Los Angeles that he made his first fortuitous connection, rooming with Detroit transplant Glenn Frey. The two incomers formed a duo, Longbranch Pennywhistle, before Souther persuaded Ronstadt to hire Frey for her band, thereby sowing the seeds of The Eagles when he broke away with the drummer Don Henley.

Souther could have been an Eagle himself after attending an audition at the Troubadour, but he was deemed surplus to requirements and ended up writing for the band instead.

When news of his passing broke, the surviving members of The Eagles hailed him as “a brother, a friend and a brilliant collaborator”.

For Souther, he was in the right place at the right time, describing the LA folk and country rock scene in an interview with Performing Songwriter magazine as “a really incredibly diverse bunch of people that moved there from everywhere else. The common denominator is that we were all hungry at the same time. We were all playing these open mic nights at the Troubadour and we became friends and had a real shared ethic about music. We tried to write songs that we felt would last a long time. At least that was my motivation.”

He later added: “Now, I keep meeting young musicians who will say to me, ‘God, I wish I lived in California in the Seventies, it must have been so cool.’ To us, it was just everyday life.”

Souther was born in the motor – and music – city of Detroit. His family relocated to Dallas but he was mostly raised in Amarillo, Texas. His father John sang with big bands before giving up the touring life to run a record shop. Brought up on jazz and classical records, Souther took up violin aged eight, followed by saxophone, clarinet and drums as well as dabbling in acting at high school.

His recording career began in 1965 with local group The Cinders before his fateful relocation to California and immersion in Los Angeles’ burgeoning singer/songwriter culture.

An affair and break-up with fellow songwriter Judee Sill inspired her song Jesus Was a Cross Maker. But it was another girlfriend, Linda Ronstadt, who introduced him to country music and impressed on him the importance of enunciating his lyrics.

He started submitting songs as JD Souther but used his full name for his self-titled solo debut in 1972, recorded for David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Thereafter he was JD – in honour, he said, of JS Bach.

He recorded two albums as the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band with Chris Hillman of The Byrds and Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield. When their association ended, he released his second solo album Black Rose, which included Ronstadt duet If You Have Crying Eyes.

Souther scored his biggest solo hit in 1979 with the title track of his third album You’re Only Lonely, a Roy Orbison-inspired country croon graced with backing vocals by Henley, Frey, Jackson Browne and Phil Everly.

A couple of years later, he was back in the charts trading divorce sentiments with his friend James Taylor on Her Town Too and he co-wrote The Eagles’s final Hot 100 chart topper, Heartache Tonight, before retiring to the Hollywood hills.

His solo career may have been paused but Souther’s songs continued to feature on film soundtracks. Another Ronstadt duet, Hearts Against the Wind, was used in the John Travolta-starring Urban Cowboy, Doin’ Time For Bein’ Young was heard in John Waters’s Cry-Baby and Souther was approached to play a pianist in Steven Spielberg’s Always. Sporadic roles followed, including as an environmental activist in thirtysomething.

Souther relocated to Nashville in 2002 and ten years later he joined the inaugural cast of the TV series of the same name as sage music industry veteran Watty White, a role which did not require a huge deal of acting. “There’s a very thin line between my life and fiction,” Souther once said, “but I’m not going to be one to say where it is.”

He resumed recording albums after a hiatus of 25 years, releasing If The World Was You in 2008 and Natural History in 2011, for which he recorded his own version of Best of My Love.

Souther was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2013, hailed as “a principal architect of the Southern California sound” and released his final album, Tenderness, in 2015.

He joined his Eagles buddies onstage in Los Angeles in January of this year, was still performing live less than a week before his death and was poised to embark on a tour with singer/songwriter Karla Bonoff when he passed away at home.

His first marriage, to Alexandra Sliwin in 1969, ended in divorce three years later. He is survived by two sisters and his second wife Sarah Nicholson.

Obituaries

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