John Barlow Jarvis
John Barlow Jarvis is a pianist and songwriter who played on pop and rock records in Los Angeles in the 1970s, then moved to Nashville in the early 1980s and became a busy session pianist there. He co-wrote two Grammy-winning country songs, “Love Can Build a Bridge” for the Judds and “I Still Believe in You” for Vince Gill.
He was born on 2 January 1954 in Pasadena, California. His session credits begin in the early 1970s and soon include Art Garfunkel’s Breakaway (1975), Stephen Bishop’s Careless (1976), Leo Sayer’s Endless Flight (1976), Ringo Starr’s Ringo’s Rotogravure (1976) and three Rod Stewart albums, A Night on the Town (1976), Foot Loose & Fancy Free (1977) and Foolish Behaviour (1980). Around the turn of the decade he also played on Delbert McClinton’s Keeper of the Flame (1979), Harry Nilsson’s Flash Harry (1980) and John Cougar’s Nothin’ Matters and What If It Did (1980).
He moved to Nashville in 1982, and from 1983 his credits are mostly country records: Hank Williams Jr.’s Major Moves (1984), Emmylou Harris’s The Ballad of Sally Rose (1985), Vince Gill’s The Things That Matter (1985), George Strait’s #7, Steve Earle’s Guitar Town and Lyle Lovett’s first album (all 1986), and Waylon Jennings’s Will the Wolf Survive and Working Without a Net (1986). He played piano on Jennings’s Full Circle (MCA, 1988).
Alongside the session work he made instrumental albums of his own for MCA’s Master Series: So Far So Good (1986), Something Constructive (1987), Whatever Works (1988) and Pure Contours (1990). Balancing Act followed in 1993 and View from a Southern Porch in 2004.
As a songwriter he shared the Grammy for Best Country Song twice in a row. “Love Can Build a Bridge,” written with Naomi Judd and Paul Overstreet and recorded by the Judds, won at the 1992 ceremony. “I Still Believe in You,” written with Vince Gill and released by Gill in 1992, won at the 1993 ceremony and was also the Country Music Association’s Song of the Year in 1993.
