Autry Inman
Musician · 1929–1988 · Florence, Alabama
Best known for
Songwriter
Autry Inman was an Alabama-born country and rockabilly singer, bassist, and songwriter whose songs were picked up by Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Dolly Parton, and the Louvin Brothers, among others. The Louvin Brothers’ recording of his “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby” entered the standard bluegrass repertoire and was revived a generation later by Alison Krauss.
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- Born Robert Autry Inman on January 6, 1929, in Florence, Alabama.
- Picked up guitar at age five; performed on Muscle Shoals radio station WLAY by age fourteen and formed his first band, the Alabama Blue Boys, at twelve.
- Played bass for Cowboy Copas’s Oklahoma Cowboys and for George Morgan’s Candy Kids through the late 1940s and into 1952.
- Released his first solo singles on Bullet before signing with Decca in 1952; cut more than forty country sides for the label.
- Returned from his Army discharge in 1956 to a country-music landscape suddenly dominated by rockabilly; switched styles and cut “Be Bop Baby” backed with “It Would Be a Doggone Lie,” his best-remembered rockabilly side.
- Wrote “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby,” cut by the Louvin Brothers and later by Alison Krauss.
- Scored his biggest chart hit in 1968 with the recitation single “Ballad of Two Brothers,” co-released with Bob Luman; it reached No. 14 country and No. 48 on the Hot 100.
- Died September 6, 1988.
