Rest In Peace: John David (JD) Souther
An architect of the 70s SoCal sound has passed
I woke up this morning to the sad news of the passing of singer-songwriter John David (JD) Souther. He was 78. No cause of death had been announced as of my writing this.
You might not know his name, but my bet is you know some of his best known songs. JD co-wrote hit songs for The Eagles like “Best of My Love,” “James Dean,” “Heartache Tonight,” and “New Kid In Town.”
As a new kid in the town of LA in the late 60s, Souther met Glenn Frey and the two of them formed the country rock/folk duo Longbranch Pennywhistle. He released a series of excellent solo albums in 1972 beginning with his self-titled John David Souther, recorded a couple of albums with Chris Hillman (The Byrds, Flying BurritoBrothers) and Richie Furay (Buffalo Springfield) under the Souther-Hillman-Furay name, and his solo songs have been covered by Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, The Chicks, George Strait, and others. JD has a sweet, soulful singing style and was a beautiful harmonizer - check out his duet with James Taylor on “Her Town Too.”
In 2015 I had the honor of meeting JD when he came by the WXPN studios here in Philly to record World Cafe. During the interview he played a handful of songs, and told us some great stories about songwriting in the 70s, dating Judee Sill and Linda Ronstadt, how Smokey Robinson told him that one of his songs “Faithless Love” was a perfect song, meeting Glenn Frey, writing with Frey and Don Henley for The Eagles, and Souther’s love of Sinatra, Buddy Holly and Ray Charles.
In’ 76, JD released what many fans (myself included) consider to be his best solo album, Black Rose. It includes “Faithless Love” “Simple Man, Simple Dream,” “Your Turn Too,” and “If You Have Crying Eyes,” and was recorded with all of JD’s pals: Lowell George, Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Andrew Gold, David Crosby, Jim Keltner, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Walsh, Waddy Wachtel and others (including Donald Byrd and Stanley Clarke). It stands as one of the great Southern California singer-songwriter albums that you need to hear, especially if you’re a fan of the Laurel Canyon/Eagles/Ronstadt/Jackson Browne, etc continuum.
I put together a playlist of some of JD’s solo work, his co-writes and collabs below. Rest in peace, JD. Thanks for the music.
He was a craftsman. No one wrote about sadness and longing and love better than JD.
JD Souther quoted in Variety
First of all, because there were no true southern Californians in that group except Jackson Browne, and he was from Orange County. Glenn is from Detroit, Henley’s from Texas, I’m from Texas, Linda’s from Arizona, Waddy (Wachtel) was from New York, Kooch (Danny Kortchmar) was from New York, James (Taylor) was from outside Boston, and Warren Zevon was from Mars. It was a really incredibly diverse bunch of people that moved there from everywhere else. The common denominator is that we were all hungry at the same time. We were all playing these open-mic nights at the Troubadour, hoot nights, and we became friends and had a real shared ethic about music being good, and about its being good being more important than it being temporarily popular. We tried to write songs that we felt would last a long time. At least that was my motivation.