Bob McDill’s music education began with viola lessons in the fourth grade. He later learned guitar and played in local bands throughout high school. From 1962 to 1966, he attended Lamar University before enlisting in the United States Naval Reserve. After his service, McDill moved to Memphis to pursue a songwriting career. He initially attempted to write rock and pop material but shifted his focus to country after hearing George Jones' “Good Year for the Roses.” McDill landed his first chart record in 1967 with Perry Como’s “The Happy Man,” followed by a second success when Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs recorded “Black Sheep.”

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Active from the 1960s through 2000, McDill became one of country music’s most prolific and respected writers, penning or co-writing 31 number-one country hits. His songs were recorded by major artists across several decades, including The Grateful Dead, Ray Charles, Joe Cocker, Anne Murray, and B.J. Thomas. His work also appeared in films such as Primary Colors, The Thing Called Love, Texasville, and Werner Herzog’s documentary Grizzly Man.

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McDill earned four Grammy nominations and received Songwriter of the Year honors from Broadcast Music Incorporated (BMI), the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), and the Nashville Songwriters Association International. In the early 1980s, Juice Newton recorded four of his songs—“I’m Dancing As Fast As I Can,” “Shot Full of Love,” “Runaway Hearts,” and “Falling in Love”—all of which appeared on Gold- and Platinum-certified albums. “Don’t Close Your Eyes,” recorded by Keith Whitley, reached #1 in August 1988 and was later covered by Kellie Pickler and Alan Jackson. McDill also wrote two of Mel McDaniel’s biggest hits, “Louisiana Saturday Night” and “Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On.” His co-written piece “Someone Like You,” with Dickey Lee, appears on Emmylou Harris’s album Profile II. Into the 1990s he continued producing major hits, including Alan Jackson’s “Gone Country,” Pam Tillis’s Grammy-nominated “All the Good Ones Are Gone,” and Doug Stone’s “Why Didn’t I Think of That.”

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McDill received ASCAP’s Golden Note Award at the 50th anniversary of the CMA Awards on October 29, 2012, recognizing his extraordinary impact on American popular music. In 2015, he received the Academy of Country Music’s Poet’s Award for lifetime achievement. Nobel Prize–winning author V. S. Naipaul devoted a section of his 1989 travelogue A Turn in the South to McDill, offering an unusually thoughtful portrait of the songwriter and quoting extensively from “Good Ole Boys Like Me.”

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McDill is the author of two books: Tales of the Old River Rod and Gun, Bloody Mary Society and Gentleman's Club and The Ancestors and Descendants of Robert Nathanial McDill. He retired from songwriting in 2000.