Randall Hylton
Musician · 1945–2001 · Willis, Virginia
Best known for
Songwriter
Randall Hylton was one of bluegrass music's most prolific songwriters, a Virginia-born guitarist whose 200-plus compositions in the Greasy Creek Music catalog were recorded across the genre — from Ralph Stanley to Doyle Lawson, the Lewis Family, and the Osborne Brothers — before his early death in 2001.
- Born January 8, 1945 in Willis, Floyd County, Virginia; learned guitar at age 5 in a Chet Atkins / Merle Travis fingerstyle vein.
- Moved to Nashville in 1973 to write country music; pivoted to bluegrass in 1976 and founded his own publishing company, Greasy Creek Music.
- Wrote more than 200 songs across his career, of which more than 70 were recorded; signature compositions include "Room at the Top of the Stairs" (first cut by Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys in 1986), "Slippers With Wings," "Hallelujah Turnpike," "Cold Sheets of Rain," and "Country Poor and Country Proud."
- Performed solo as a flatpicking guitarist and singer, often in period costume, mixing serious material with parodies and impressions on the festival circuit.
- Won the SPBGMA Songwriter of the Year award in five of six consecutive years during the 1980s.
- His compositions have been recorded by Ralph Stanley, Doyle Lawson, Larry Sparks, Mac Wiseman, the Osborne Brothers, the Lewis Family (more than seventy Hylton songs), the Country Gentlemen, the Bluegrass Cardinals, the Seldom Scene, and Rhonda Vincent, among many others.
- Died March 19, 2001 at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville at age 56, of a brain aneurysm; Pinecastle Records released the tribute album In Memory of a Friend: A Tribute to Randall Hylton later that year.
- Inducted into the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame in 2022, posthumously.