Ep. 68 - HUGH PRESTWOOD ("The Song Remembers When")

Songcraft: Spotlight on Songwriters

Hugh Prestwood has written twenty charting singles on the Billboard rankings, including eight Top 10 hits. He began his professional career as a folk singer/songwriter in Greenwich Village in the 1970s before finding commercial success as a writer when Judy Collins began recording his songs toward the end of the decade. In the 1980s he appeared on the country charts with the #1 singles “The Sound of Goodbye” by Crystal Gayle and “The Moon Is Still Over Her Shoulder” by Michael Johnson. By the following decade Prestwood was regularly topping the charts with titles such as Randy Travis’ “Hard Rock Bottom Of Your Heart,” which earned him the BMI Country Song of the Year Award. Similarly, Trisha Yearwood’s recording of “The Song Remembers When” earned him NSAI’s Song of the Year honors and an Emmy award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Music and Lyrics. Other artists who’ve recording his songs include Alison Krauss, Anne Murray, Conway Twitty, Shelby Lynne, John Conlee, Barbara Mandrell, Gene Watson, The Judds, Lee Greenwood, Tanya Tucker, Alison Krauss, Jimmy Buffet, Sammy Kershaw, Don Williams, Kristin Chenoweth, Vern Gosdin, Kathy Mattea, and Collin Raye, who took the song “On the Verge” to the top of the charts in 1997. Hugh recently released his first full-length album as an artist, I Used to Be the Real Me, on Judy Collins’ Wildflower Records. He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006.