Paul Craft

Musician · 1938–2014 · Memphis, Tennessee
Best known for Songwriter Banjo Guitar

Paul Craft was one of the sharpest songwriters to cross between bluegrass and mainstream country, a wry stylist whose catalog ranged from the aching “Keep Me From Blowing Away” to the deadpan gospel novelty “Dropkick Me, Jesus.” A self-taught multi-instrumentalist who first made his name as a bluegrass banjo player, he wrote songs recorded by the Seldom Scene, the Osborne Brothers, the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and Alison Krauss before his 2014 induction into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

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  • Paul Charles Craft was born August 12, 1938, in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in part on his family’s farm at Proctor, Arkansas, across the river. A precocious, self-taught musician, he took up harmonica, accordion, ukulele, guitar, and banjo as a boy.
  • He earned an English degree from the University of Virginia, and in 1961, while on leave from school, toured as the banjo player in Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys—an apprenticeship in hard-driving bluegrass that shaped his ear for a well-turned line. He also completed a year of law school in Memphis and served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
  • Back in Memphis he fell in with fellow writers Dickey Lee and Allen Reynolds, who encouraged his songwriting; his first significant cut came in 1968 with a song recorded by Skeeter Davis.
  • His “Keep Me From Blowing Away” became an early standard, cut by the Seldom Scene on their 1973 album Act II and then, memorably, by Linda Ronstadt on her landmark 1974 record Heart Like a Wheel. It was later revisited by Willie Nelson and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others.
  • “Midnight Flyer,” a bluegrass-flavored railroad song, was recorded by the Osborne Brothers in 1973 and reached a rock audience when the Eagles included it on their 1974 album On the Border.
  • Craft moved to Nashville in 1975 and was signed to RCA, where he worked with Chet Atkins; by his own count some 35 of his songs were recorded in his first year in town. He also ran his own publishing company, where he gave a young Don Schlitz—future author of “The Gambler”—one of his earliest writing deals.
  • Two of his songs earned nominations for the Grammy for Best Country Song in the same year: the tongue-in-cheek “Dropkick Me, Jesus (Through the Goalposts of Life),” a No. 17 country hit for Bobby Bare in 1976, and “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life,” a hit for Moe Bandy.
  • His gift for comic understatement produced the recitation novelty “It’s Me Again, Margaret” and other well-loved sides, while “Brother Jukebox” became a No. 1 country single for Mark Chesnutt in 1991. He also wrote “Come as You Were,” a No. 7 country hit for T. Graham Brown.
  • Craft recorded in his own right as well. His 1974 novelty “It’s Me Again, Margaret” reached No. 55 on the country chart for Truth Records, and he charted three more singles for RCA Nashville in 1977–78. Decades later he cut three albums for the Dutch label Strictly Country—Brother Jukebox (1998), Raised by the Railroad Line (2002), and Too Bad You’re No Good (2007)—that showcased his warm, unhurried delivery.
  • On October 5, 2014, after nearly four decades in Nashville, Craft was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. He died just thirteen days later, on October 18, 2014, in Nashville at age 76, remembered as a writer’s writer whose economy and wit belied the depth of feeling in his best songs.

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