Feted songwriter Jim Weatherly will be honored by his local community on Saturday (29) in Pontotoc, MS. A Mississippi Country Music Trail marker will be unveiled at 1pm outside the Pontotoc Community House, where he performed many times as a young artist. Weatherly died in 2021 at the age of 77.
Weatherly is celebrated as the writer of many classic songs, including Gladys Knight and the Pips’ “Midnight Train To Georgia” and the same group’s late Motown entry “Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye.” Both songs debuted on the singer-songwriter’s 1972 album Weatherly, the first as “Midnight Plane To Houston.” That LP also included his own love letter to his home state, “Mississippi Song.”
He became labelmates of the soul group on Buddah Records after the success of their cover, which was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and Knight and the Pips recorded a dozen of his songs in total. Weatherly was also the co-writer, with Keith Stegall, of Glen Campbell’s country Top 5 hit of 1984, “A Lady Like You”; his own 1974 hit “The Need To Be”; and more than three dozen numbers recorded by country great Ray Price.
Weatherly was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006, the Mississippi Musicians Hall of Fame in 2011, and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014. Previous local recognition from the state of Mississippi arrived that same year with a Governor’s Award for Excellence in Music.
The Mississippi Country Music Trail commemorates artists’ “many varied contributions and influences as well as the places that cradled their creativity.” Others who have been commemorated with markers include Bobbie Gentry, longtime Glen Campbell collaborator and producer Carl Jackson, Charley Pride, Chris LeDoux, Conway Twitty, Faith Hill, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jimmie Rodgers, Johnny Cash, Marty Stuart, and Tammy Wynette. A full list, with a map of locations, can be found here.
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