Boudleaux Bryant
b. Diadorius Boudleaux Bryant, 13 February 1920, Shellman, Georgia, USA, d. 30 June 1987. With his wife Felice Bryant, he formed one of the greatest songwriting teams in country music and pop history. From a musical family Boudleaux learned classical violin and piano from the age of five. During the early '30s his father organized a family band with Boudleaux and his four sisters and brothers, playing at county fairs in the mid-west. In 1937 Boudleaux moved to Atlanta, playing with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra as well as jazz and country music groups. For several years he went on the road, playing in radio station bands in Detroit and Memphis before joining Hank Penny's Radio Cowboys which performed over the airwaves of WSB Atlanta. 
In 1945 he met and married Felice Scaduto and the pair began composing together. The earliest recordings of Bryant songs included the Three Sons Give Me Some Sugar, Sugar Baby, And I'll Be Your Sweetie Pie but the first break came when they sent Country Boy to Nashville publisher Fred Rose of Acuff-Rose. When this became a hit for Jimmy Dickens, the duo moved to Nashville as staff writers for Acuff-Rose. Among their numerous successes in the '50s were Have A Good Time (a pop success for Tony Bennettin 1952), Hey Joe (recorded by Carl Smith and Frankie Laine in 1953) and the Eddy Arnold hits I've Been Thinking and The Richest Man (1955). 
In 1957, Fred's son Wesley Rose commissioned the Bryants to switch to teenage material for the The Everly Brothers. Beginning with Bye Bye Love, they supplied a stream of songs which were melodramatic vignettes of teen life. Several of them were composed by Boudleaux alone. These included the wistful All I Have To Do Is Dream, the tough and vengeful Bird Dog, Devoted To You and Like Strangers. At this time he wrote what has become his most-recorded song, Love Hurts. This sorrowful, almost self-pitying ballad has been a favourite with the country-rock fraternity, through notable versions by Roy Orbison and Gram Parsons. There have also been less orthodox rock treatments by Jim Capaldi and Nazareth. From the early '60s, the Bryants returned to the country sphere, composing the country standard Rocky Top as well as providing occasional hits for artists such as Sonny James (Baltimore 1964) and Roy Clark (Come Live With Me 1978). Shortly before Boudleaux's death in June 1987, the Bryants were inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall Of Fame.