Jay Bird's In ....
The Hall, The House and The Heart
This week, October 15, 2015, the late Jay Spell, along with Chuck Jackson, Eric Church, Gerald Alston, Warren Haynes, the late Nappy Brown, The Fantastic Shakers, and the late Bishop F. C. Barnes, became the newest members of the North Carolina Music Hall Of Fame. Here they will take their places along side artists , musicians and tunesmiths like Roberta Flack, James Taylor, Andy Griffith, Randy Travis, George Hamilton IV, Don Gibson, John D. Loudermilk, Don Schlitz, Ben E King and many many more.
Although I knew of this event and had planned to attend for about a year now, breaking my leg this past winter, kind of put the kabosh on making the 7 hour trek from Nashville, to the Kannapolis, North Carolina. As of August, I was still planning on going. but setbacks that even led to consulting with my surgeon, whether or not we should remove the steel plate, that now resides attached to the bone in my right leg, was in the cards. Instead we have opted for giving it a full year or so for the plate to "settle in"
Enter Ms Faye Benafield, the one person whose tireless effiorts, finally saw their way to fruition this week in seeing that her longtime friend and companion Jay "JayBird" Spell received the well deserved honor from his home state. I only met Faye five years ago, when Jay's passing introduced us via the internet. Faye saw my personal tribute to Jay online and we've been friends since. Jay was much more than a sideman to me and many others when "Music City" was fortunate to have him live here. He was a true friend, that was just the kind of person he was. Faye has been a guest now of Anne and myself several times, and she stayed with us on her way from Arkansas, to North Carolina last week and today on her return trip from the induction ceremony. We got to hear all about the show I couldn't be at from the person I know made it possible and I'm sure it meant the most to. BTW We are planning to do a tribute show to Jay here in Nashville in 2016.
The song you are hearing "The Lone Wolf & The Whistling Moon, came about in the early '90s, when Jay gave me a copy of Ronnie Milsap's "True Believer" CD that he played on. He played on many of Ronnie's recordings, including the huge CMA record of the year "Lost In The '50s Tonight. The True Believer title song was written by John HIatt and with me always being a fan of the fine print on label copy and liner notes, I took notice that John Hiatt's publishing company was called Whistling Moon Music. A few days later Bob Cheevers and yours truly wrote the song. Like many of my tunes back then I demoed them at home in my makeshift spare room studio. That's Jay playing accordion on it. The same accordion I am now so proud to be the caretaker of .
THE ABOVE BIO ONLY SCRATCHES THE SURFACE OF THE KIND OF LIFE JAY HAD IN MUSIC ON STAGE & IN THE STUDIOS OF MEMPHIS, NASHVILLE, LOS ANGELES & THE CAROLINAS
FOR MUCH MORE BE SURE TO VISIT JAY SPELL.COM THERE'S A LINK TO IT ON THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE
IT JUST SEEMED RIGHT TO TAKE A PHOTO OF JAY'S PLAQUE ALONG SIDE HIS ACCORDION IN MY MUSIC ROOM
LINKS
JAY SPELL.COM
Back To Spooner's Web Glob