Dean Dillon
Musician · b. 1955 · Lake City, Tennessee
Best known for
Songwriter
Dean Dillon is a Tennessee-born Nashville country songwriter whose three-decade partnership with George Strait produced more than sixty Strait cuts, including the No. 1 country singles “Unwound,” “The Chair,” “Marina del Rey,” “Ocean Front Property,” and “Easy Come, Easy Go.” His co-write with Linda Hargrove on “Tennessee Whiskey” became one of the most-covered country songs of the past forty years.
Assisted by AI.
Spot something off? Help us fix it.
- Born Larry Dean Flynn on March 26, 1955, in Lake City, Tennessee.
- Began playing guitar at seven and performed publicly as a teenager on the Knoxville variety show Jim Clayton Startime.
- Hitchhiked to Nashville at eighteen after graduating from Oak Ridge High School in 1973.
- Co-wrote “Unwound” with Frank Dycus; George Strait’s 1981 MCA debut single reached No. 6 country and launched Strait’s career.
- Co-wrote “Tennessee Whiskey” with Linda Hargrove in 1981; David Allan Coe cut the original, George Jones’s 1983 version reached No. 2 country, and Chris Stapleton’s 2015 cover spent more than a year on the chart.
- Co-wrote sixty-three songs cut by George Strait, including eleven No. 1 country singles.
- Wrote “The Chair,” “Marina del Rey,” “Ocean Front Property,” “Easy Come, Easy Go,” and “Famous Last Words of a Fool” for Strait.
- Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2020.
