- Joe Allison
Joe Marion Allison (
October 3 ,1924 -August 2 ,2002 ) was an American Hall of Fame songwriter, a radio and television personality, a record producer, and acountry music business executive.Fact|date=March 2008Born in
McKinney, Texas , Joe Allison worked as a commercial artist before embarking on a career in the entertainment industry, first as adisc jockey on aParis, Texas radio station. In 1945, after a few years on radio, Allison took a job as theemcee for theNorth America n tour of country music singing starTex Ritter . While working on tour, he offered Ritter a song he had written which the singer turned into a No. 1 hit on the country music charts. This success ultimately led to Allison moving to a radio station inNashville, Tennessee where he remained until accepting an offer from a station inPasadena, California .While working on radio and television on the West Coast, Allison continued writing music, many of which were co-authored with his first wife, Audrey. He scored a success with a song recorded by country singer
Faron Young and a major hit whenteen idol Tommy Sands recorded his song, "Teen Age Crush". In 1959, Allison wrote his most famous song forJim Reeves . "He'll Have to Go" would become not only aplatinum record for Reeves, but a song that would be recorded successfully by more than one hundred other artists includingElvis Presley ,Bing Crosby , Tom Jones,Eddy Arnold and evenbig band leaderGuy Lombardo . That same year, Allison was hired byLiberty Records to create their country music department. At Liberty he signedWillie Nelson to his first recording contract.In 1965, Allison returned to Nashville as head the country music department at
Dot Records . After two years with the Dot label, he took over as the head of Capital Records' country music department where he stayed until 1974. Semi-retired, he then set up his own part-time business to produce records while dabbling in a passion with his wife as a dealer ofpaintings andantiques .During his time in the music business, Joe Allison won seven
ASCAP awards for record producing and five BMI performance awards. In 1976, he was elected to theDisc Jockey Hall of Fame and two years later was inducted into theNashville Songwriters Hall of Fame . An active promoter of the industry, Joe Allison was a founding member of theCountry Music Association and served as President of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI). Joe Allison died in Nashville in 2002 and was interred there in theWoodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery .External links
* http://www.nashvillesongwritersfoundation.com/fame/allison.html
* http://www.musicianguide.com/biographies/1608003616/Joe-Allison.html
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