Donnie Fritts

Donnie Fritts passed away on August 27, 2019, leaving behind a lifetime of remarkable music and song. All of us at Single Lock were beyond honored to call Donnie a friend and release the final two records of his career, Oh My Goodness and June (A Tribute to Arthur Alexander). He embodied the soul and character that makes our community special, and his absence will always be felt at Single Lock.

From his New York Times obituary:

As part of a close circle of songwriters working in Northern Alabama in the ’60s, he wrote or co-wrote signature songs for the likes of the soul singer Arthur Alexander (“Rainbow Road,” with Dan Penn) and the Box Tops (“Choo Choo Train,” with Eddie Hinton). “Choo Choo Train” is also featured on the soundtrack of Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”

Mr. Fritts and Mr. Hinton also wrote the disarmingly intimate “Breakfast in Bed,” a centerpiece of Dusty Springfield’s landmark 1969 album, “Dusty in Memphis,” which originally appeared as the B-side of her Grammy-winning Top 10 pop single, “Son of a Preacher Man.”

In 1973, the prototypical Nashville outlaw Waylon Jennings had a Top 40 country hit with “We Had It All,” a bittersweet ballad written by Mr. Fritts and Troy Seals. It was subsequently recorded by artists ranging from Dolly Parton and Tina Turner to Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones.

During Mr. Fritts’s tenure with Mr. Kristofferson, he appeared in three movies directed by Sam Peckinpah in which Mr. Kristofferson was also cast, including the 1973 neo-western “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” which starred Mr. Kristofferson as Billy. 

A colorful character onscreen and off, Mr. Fritts appeared alongside Mr. Kristofferson in Frank Pierson’s 1976 remake of “A Star Is Born.” He also played keyboards on the movie’s theme song, “Evergreen,” written by Barbra Streisand and Paul Williams, which won an Academy Award for best original song and a Grammy for song of the year.

Possessed of a rough-hewed voice akin to Mr. Kristofferson’s, Mr. Fritts was a late bloomer as a recording artist. He released only a handful of albums, and he did not release the first — “Prone to Lean,” a mix of humorous and tenderhearted originals produced by Jerry Wexler for Atlantic Records — until 1974. 

That album derived its title from “the Alabama Leaning Man,” an enigmatic nickname conferred on Mr. Fritts by Mr. Wexler. In the liner notes, Mr. Kristofferson chose a more decipherable — and apposite — sobriquet to describe his friend’s approach to writing and playing music: “Funky Donnie Fritts.”

Donnie was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2008.

To learn more about this remarkable man, we invite you to view a documentary we commissioned for his first Single Lock release, Oh My Goodness. It’s called Undeniably Donnie, and it is linked below.

Rest easy, Donnie.

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