Poets and Prophets: Salute to Songwriter Dennis Morgan

Poets and Prophets: Salute to Songwriter Dennis Morgan

2:30 p.m. Central: Ford Theater; Included with museum admission; Program Ticket Required; Free to museum members.

Morgan has been one of the music industry’s most versatile and consistently successful songwriters for more than 40 years. His catalog includes more than 20 #1 singles, and his compositions have topped the charts in multiple genres and various countries. Around age 20, Morgan began his songwriting career when he hitchhiked to Nashville with $40 and a cache of original songs. He soon found success as a session guitarist and jingle writer, including national campaigns for Kentucky Fried Chicken, Opryland, Rubbermaid and "Pull for America,"a 1976 U.S. bicentennial campaign featuring William Shatner. In 1978, Morgan and fellow songwriter Kye Fleming forged a partnership that led to pop-country hits for Country Music Hall of Fame member Barbara Mandrell (“Crackers,” “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool,” “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed”), Country Music Hall of Fame member Ronnie Milsap (“I Wouldn’t Have Missed It for the World,” “She Keeps the Home Fires Burning,” “Smoky Mountain Rain”), Sylvia (“Nobody,” “Snapshot”), Steve Wariner (“All Roads Lead to You”) and many others.

During the 1980s and ‘90s, Morgan delivered both country hits as well as mainstream pop triumphs for Aretha Franklin and George Michael (“I Knew You Were Waiting for Me”) and Rod Stewart (“My Heart Can’t Tell You No”). He maintained his creative excellence in subsequent decades with hits by artists including Eric Clapton, Willie Dixon, Amy Grant, Faith Hill and Country Music Hall of Fame members Willie Nelson and George Strait. Morgan is also a successful song publisher — his companies, Little Shop of Morgansongs and Morgan Music Group, boast a catalog of more than 8,000 titles — a four-time BMI Songwriter of the Year, a two-time BMI Pop Songwriter of the Year and a 2004 Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee.