The best-known composition of American songwriter and singer Mickey Newbury, who died last weekend, aged 62, is An American Trilogy, which Elvis Presley frequently sang at the end of his concerts. But Newbury wrote more than 500 other songs, and, with colleagues such as Kris Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall, brought a more literate and thoughtful dimension to country music in the 1960s.
On hearing of Newbury's death, Kristofferson said: "When he got it just right, simple lyrics and simple melodies worked in a way to break your heart."
Newbury was born in Houston, Texas. His parents were country music fans from farming families, but as a teenager he absorbed the sounds of rhythm & blues and Mexican music. He performed and recorded with a vocal group, the Embers, which toured with black artists, often as the only white act on the bill. At 18, Newbury joined the US Air Force, spending three years at RAF Croughton in Oxfordshire. Weekend leave was spent at parties in London, an experience Newbury was to draw on for his song, Swiss Cottage Place.
He turned decisively to songwriting after leaving the service in 1963. Following a spell on the shrimp boats of south-east Texas, he moved to Nashville to try to sell his songs. There he met Kristofferson, another would-be writer, who became a life-long friend. Newbury's work caught the ear of the doyen of Nashville music publishers, Wesley Rose. Consequently, the country star Don Gibson made the first recording of a Newbury song.
With its languorous melody and melancholic lyrics, Funny, Familiar, Forgotten Feelings set the pattern for much of Newbury's work. Explaining the sad tone of many of his songs, he once said: "Music has never been anything but an escape from depression for me. I write my sadness. I call it robbing the dragon."
The late 1960s saw the peak of Newbury's commercial success, as numerous country artists recorded his songs. Jerry Lee Lewis recorded a bravura performance of She Only Woke Me Up To Say Goodbye, Kenny Rogers had his first hit with Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) and Here Comes The Rain, Baby, was a best-seller for Eddy Arnold.
Newbury's compositions also appealed to audiences beyond country music. In 1968, as well as topping the country charts, he had songs at the top of the hit parades of pop music (Just Dropped In), easy listening (Sweet Memories in a version by Andy Williams), and rhythm & blues (Solomon Burke's recording of Time Is A Thief).
That Newbury was established as a "New Nashville" writer was confirmed by the reference to "Newbury's train songs" in Luckenbach Texas, a 1970 hit for Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. In 1980 he was inducted into the Nashville Hall of Fame.
Newbury made his first album as a singer-songwriter in 1968, but his own relaxed, downbeat singing style did not draw a large following until the album Frisco Mabel Joy, recorded for Elektra in 1971. This included An American Trilogy, a medley of three songs associated with the American Civil War. It juxtaposed the Confederate anthem Dixie with the slave spiritual All My Sorrows, and had been well received when Newbury first performed it at a San Francisco club, even though the nervous club owner tried to persuade him to drop it from his programme. Newbury's recording of the medley was a Top 30 hit in the United States, but following its adoption as a signature song by Elvis Presley it has been recorded by more than 100 performers.
He died of emphysema, and leaves his wife Susan and four children.
Milton (Mickey) Newbury: born May 19th, 1940; died September 28th, 2002