

Little did I know that he had just lifted his career off the launch pad with the three Mandrell songs “She’s Loved Me Out of You,” “How Long Does It Take,” and “Bedroom Reunion.” The name of the album is “Lovers, Friends and Strangers.”ĭean was born at the Lake City Hospital and grew up in Cherry Bottom. I knew Dean, who went by Dean Dalton in the early days, had left Nashville and ended up working at a carpet mill at Dalton, Georgia, for a while. The two Campbell County boys spent the better part of an hour on the radio talking about Dean’s first major accomplishment. In those days, I was the afternoon disc jockey and program director at 103.5 at Knoxville, Channel 10’s FM station, WBIR-FM. He took off for Nashville, and I played radio. We’d been childhood friends through high school. It was that Mandrell album in May of 1977 that led to my reunion with Dean. Before I knew it, I had three songs on Barbara Mandrell’s album, and the rest is history,” said Dillon from his Colorado home on Wednesday morning soon after the Country Music Association publicly announced its Hall of Fame inductees for 2020.

Next I met music producer and publisher Tom Collins, and he signed me as a writer. I worked at Opryland during the 1975 season. “I’d come and go, come and go (to Nashville). Cherry Bottom native Dean Dillon will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame later this year. The Knack refused to give interviews and the press soon turned against them and "My Sharona", the rather sexist hit song Averre and Fieger had written.CHERRY BOTTOM, TN (WLAF) – For a career that now sits at the top of the highest peak on country music’s mountain, it all humbly began with a thumb ride to Nashville in the summer of 1973. Recorded for $18,000 and produced by Mike Chapman, who had just finished working with Blondie on Parallel Lines, Get the Knack became one of the biggest-selling début albums of all time, but also something of a curse. Logically enough, they chose Capitol, the US major associated with the Beatles, and even signed their record deal at the top of the company's famous circular building in Los Angeles (sweet revenge after being turned down four times by the label).
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At first, record companies ignored their demo tape, but a series of gigs at the Troubadour in Los Angeles created such a buzz that, on separate occasions, Tom Petty, Stephen Stills and Bruce Springsteen got up on stage to jam with them.īy early 1979, the Knack had a dozen labels clamouring to sign them.
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And How to Get It (1965) and aimed to record "high-school songs with a teenage point of view". In 1978, he joined Fieger, Averre and Niles to form the Knack, a group who took their name from the Richard Lester film The Knack. After playing with Albert Collins in the late Sixties and early Seventies, Gary began a long-lasting association with Jack Bruce which took in several tours and even a recent, thus far unreleased, session also involving Andy Summers, the former Police guitarist.

He eventually reunited with the Knack for a version of "No Matter What" for Come and Get It, a tribute album to the original power-poppers Badfinger (1997).īorn in California in 1952, Bruce Gary was drawn to the musical scene of Topanga Canyon as a teenager and soon made friends with people like the guitarist Randy California. He enjoyed being in the studio and, with Alan Douglas, co-produced several posthumous albums featuring Jimi Hendrix, such as Blues (1994), Woodstock (1994) and Voodoo Soup (1995), though aficionados of the guitarist criticised them for tinkering with the tapes and re-recording drum parts. Gary's impressive résumé also included session work for Sheryl Crow, Albert King, John Lee Hooker, Bette Midler, Harry Nilsson, Rod Stewart, Yoko Ono and George Harrison (on the Shangai Surprise soundtrack in 1986).Ī versatile drummer capable of playing in any style, Gary also backed Spencer Davis and Denny Laine - he even toured Japan with the surf-instrumental group the Ventures in 1996. He worked with such West Coast legends as the Doors guitarist Robby Krieger, Randy California and Spirit and Arthur Lee of Love, and toured with Bob Dylan, playing alongside Jim Keltner, his "drum mentor". Gary had kept busy throughout the Eighties and was justly considered one of the best drummers in the world.
