LOS ANGELES (AP) – John David “JD” Southera prolific songwriter and musician whose collaborations with the Eagles and Linda Ronstadt helped shape the country-rock sound that took hold in Southern California within the Seventies has died on the age of 78.
Souther, who contributed to a few of the Eagles' biggest hits, corresponding to “The best of my love”, “James Dean,” “The new guy in town”, And “Heartache tonight”, died Tuesday at his home in New Mexico, according to a statement on his website.
He has also worked with James Taylor, Bob Seger, Bonnie Raitt and many others and has also been successful as a solo artist. On September 24th he was scheduled to start a tour with Karla Bonoff in Phoenix, which has now been cancelled.
As he inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame In 2013, Souther was described as “one among the chief architects of the Southern California sound and a serious influence on a generation of songwriters.” He was also a major fixture on the social scene, and his girlfriends included Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Nicks, who remembered him in a 1982 interview with High Times Magazine as “very, very, very chauvinistic and really sweet and cute and wonderful, but very Texan.”
Souther was born in Detroit and grew up in Amarillo, Texas. In the late 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles, where he met fellow Michigan native Glenn Frey, founding member and guitarist of the Eagles. The two began a long-term partnership that began with a band called Longbranch Pennywhistle. Frey credited Souther with introducing him to country music.
“Our first yr together will at all times appear to be yesterday,” Souther said in a statement after Frey's death in 2016. “His amazing ability to make the nice joke and that good groove that lived inside him stick with me even now, on this loss and grief. … The music and the love are indestructible.”
Souther was so close to the Eagles that he even appeared on the back cover of their 1973 album “Desperado,” on which Souther and others reenacted the capture of the legendary Dalton Gang. He described his start with Frey at The Troubadaour, the popular West Hollywood music club, as “the most effective songwriting education I could imagine.”
“So many great songwriters found happiness here – Laura Nyro, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Newman, Elton John, James Taylor, Tim Hardin, Carole King, Rick Nelson, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Waylon Jennings, Tim Buckley, Gordon Lightfoot, Taj Mahal and more,” he said in a statement on his website. “Today it seems not possible to assume a lot music in a yr and a half or so, but that was my life and the Troubadour was our university.”
“That's where I met Linda Ronstadt, and that's where Don Henley and Glenn Frey met to form this little country-rock band called the Eagles, which might later make music history,” Souther wrote.
On his own, Souther recorded his self-titled debut in 1972 before forming the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band with former Byrds member Chris Hillman and Poco's Richie Furay. A second solo album in 1976, Black Rose, included a duet with Ronstadt, his former girlfriend, “When you have crying eyes.” Other duets he recorded along with her are “Prisoner in Disguise”, “Sometimes you can’t win” And “Hearts against the wind”, The latter appeared in the 1980 film “Urban Cowboy”.
His biggest hit as a solo artist was “You’re just lonely,” from the 1979 album of the same name.
Other songs he has written include “Run like a thief”, for Bonnie Raitt and “Unfaithful Love” And “White Rhythm and Blues” for Ronstadt. He worked with James Taylor and sang with him on “Your city too.”
Other artists he worked with as a singer included Don Henley, Christopher Cross, Dan Fogelberg and Roy Orbison.
He appeared as an actor on television in “Thirtysomething,” “Nashville,” and “Purgatory,” and within the movies “Postcards from the Edge,” “My Girl 2,” and “Deadline.”
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