Larry Cordle

bluegrass · country

Larry Cordle is a bluegrass and country songwriter and bandleader with eastern Kentucky roots who is based in Nashville and records with his band Lonesome Standard Time. He grew up on a small family farm, introduced to bluegrass, country and gospel by his great-grandfather Harry Bryant, a clawhammer banjo player and fiddler. Cordle served four years in the Navy, then earned an accounting degree from Morehead State University and worked for a CPA firm by day while playing clubs at night. His childhood friend and neighbor Ricky Skaggs cut his song Highway 40 Blues in 1983 and took it to number one, and at Skaggs' urging Cordle moved to Nashville in 1985 as a staff songwriter. His songs have since been recorded by Alison Krauss, George Strait, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood, Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson and Skaggs, appearing on projects with combined sales in the tens of millions. Lonesome Standard Time earned a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album in 1992 and an IBMA Song of the Year award in 1993, and has placed songs at number one on bluegrass and Americana charts. Cordle co-wrote Murder on Music Row with Larry Shell, a lament for traditional country's displacement that took IBMA Song of the Year in 2000 and won a CMA Song of the Year award after George Strait and Alan Jackson recorded it. He shared a Grammy for the 2003 Louvin Brothers tribute Livin', Lovin', Losin', received a further Grammy nomination for the 2018 gospel record Give Me Jesus, and won a Dove Award in 2022 for In the Sweet By and By with Dolly Parton. He was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2015 and remains a regular at the Station Inn in Nashville.

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