Nashville-based singer/songwriter Danny Flowers certainly knows his way around a Guild acoustic, what with having such formidable blues, folk and country-tinged roots-rock chops. Best known for his 13-year stint with country artist Don Williams and as the author of the classic hit “Tulsa Time” (a 1979 hit for close friend Eric Clapton), Flowers is an enduring and respected figure in American music with a long and esteemed list of credits.
The only child of a mortician in tiny Henderson, N.C., Flowers was drawn to music at a young age, spending countless hours listening and learning. He honed his guitar and songwriting skills over the years, and was invited by his friend Gove Scrivenor to record an album in Nashville. It was there, in the city’s fertile late ’60s and early ’70s music scene, that Flowers truly found his musical calling (“I was in awe, playing with people who I knew from seeing their names,” he said).
After a stint in the scruffy outlaw band of Nashville’s Cowboy Jack Clement, Flowers hit the road with R&B singer Dobie Gray right around the time of Gray’s classic and oft-covered smash 1973 hit “Drift Away.” During this period, Flowers continued to sharpen his guitar skills—absorbing Chicago blues and the work of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson and other Delta bluesmen.
After two years with Gray, Flowers joined the band of chart-topping country artist Don Williams, a gig he held for the next 13 years. Once, while snowbound in Tulsa, Okla., on tour with Williams, Flowers grabbed a guitar and some hotel stationery and cranked out a song titled “Tulsa Time” in about half an hour. Williams promptly charted another hit with the song, named 1978’s single of the year by the Country Music Association and subsequently covered by Eric Clapton, who also scored a hit with it.
In the mid-1980s, Flowers left Williams’ band and embarked on a successful career as a much sought-after session musician and sideman. He assembled the Blue Moon Orchestra for Texas singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith, wrote songs for Emmylou Harris and many other artists, and became a regular performer at famed Nashville singer/songwriter venue the Bluebird Café.
Flowers’ solo efforts include Forbidden Fruits and Vegetables (2000) and his most recent work, 2007’s Tools for the Soul.
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