Dean Dillon

Dean Dillon. Tennessee Music Pathways. Country Music songwriter and performer Dean Dillon was born Larry Dean Fynn on March 26, 1955, in Lake City, Tennessee (later renamed Rocky Top). Although Dillon began his career as a performer, he became renowned as a songwriter. His work includes “Tennessee Whiskey” for George Jones, and more than 70 songs for George Strait, including Strait’s first hit, “Unwound”, as well as eleven of Strait’s no. 1 country hits (“The Chair”, “Nobody in His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her”, “It Ain’t Cool to be Crazy About You”, “Ocean Front Property”, “Famous Last Words of a Fool”, “I’ve Come to Expect it From You”, “If I know Me”, “Easy Come, Easy Go”, “ and “The Best Day”). Other songs that Dillon has written or co-written have been recorded by Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith and others., Dillon made some early appearances on a Knoxville television show, “Jim Clayton Star Time”. After his high school graduation, he hitchhiked to Nashville and secured a job as a theme park performer at Opryland. He made his first record under the name Dean Dalton in 1974. As Dean Rutherford, he signed with a music publishing company co-owned by Charley Pride., In 1977, Johnny Rodriguez recorded one of Dillon’s songs, but his first success came in 1979 when Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius reached No. 2 on the country charts with “Lying in Love With You”. That year, Dillon signed with RCA as a performer. The head of RCA Nashville reportedly chose the name Dillon from the phone directory. Between 1979 and 1993, Dillon scored 20 hits as a performer. Two of his singles, “Nobody in His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her” and “Famous Last Words of a Fool”, later became No. 1 hits when recorded by George Strait, but, like most of Dillon’s records as an artist, they struggled in the charts., When Strait liked a song that Dillon intended to release, “Easy Come, Easy Go”, Dillon weighed the potential return from a Strait record against a less-assured future for the song if he recorded it himself and let Strait have it. Shortly after, Dillon ceased his own major label recording career to concentrate on songwriting., “Tennessee Whiskey”, a song that Dillon co-wrote with Linda Hargrove, became a No. 2 hit for George Jones in 1983 and was later covered by Chris Stapleton on his first solo album. Stapleton’s career was boosted after he and Justin Timberlake performed the song at the 2015 Country Music Association Awards show., Dillon also co-wrote Vern Gosdin’s 1983 No. 1 country hit, “Set’ em Up Joe”, a song that references Ernest Tubb, as well as “Leave Them Boys Alone”, a song recorded by Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon Jennings with a guest appearance by Tubb., In 2002, Dillon was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and is a 2013 BMI Icon recipient. He lives in Gunnison, Colorado, and in 2017 participated in “Tennessee Whiskey”, a documentary about his life., [Caption]: (From left) George Strait and Dean Dillon at the “Pure Country” movie premiere in 1992.