Nanci Griffith, Grammy-Winning Folk Artist, Dead at 68

Nanci Griffith, the Grammy-winning folk singer-songwriter whose songs were inspired by her life growing up in Texas, died on Friday in Nashville. She was 68. Her management company, Gold Mountain Entertainment, announced Griffith’s death but did not share a cause of death. “It was Nanci’s wish that no further formal statement or press release happen for a week following her passing,” Gold Mountain said in a statement to the Associated Press.

Griffith was born on July 6, 1953, in Seguin, Texas. She recorded music in several genres, but she focused primarily on country and folk. She released her debut album, There’s a Light Beyond These Woods in 1978, and she found critical acclaim in the 1980s with the albums Once in a Very Blue Moon, The Last of the True Believers, Lone Star State of Mind, and Little Love Affairs. Griffith wrote several songs that would become hits for other performers, including “Love at the Five and Dime,” later recorded by Kathy Mattea. Suzy Bogguss scored a hit with “Outbound Plane,” a song Griffith wrote with Tom Russell.

“My heart is aching,” Bogguss wrote on Instagram Friday. “A beautiful soul that I love has left this earth. I feel blessed to have many memories of our times together along with most everything she ever recorded. I’m going to spend the day reveling in the articulate masterful legacy she’s left us. Rest my dear friend Nanci Griffith.”

Griffith’s 1993 album Other Voices, Other Rooms won the 1994 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. She also received the Americana Music Association’s Americana Trailblazer Award in 2008. Throughout her career, Griffith also worked with Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Webb, John Prine, Judy Collins, and many more. Griffith recorded the first version of Julie Gold’s “From a Distance,” which would later be a big hit for Bette Midler.

Griffith also built a large fanbase in Ireland and the U.K. Her breakthrough hit in Ireland was “Trouble in the Fields,” which was written about struggling farmers in America. “I wrote it because my family were farmers in West Texas during the Great Depression,” Griffith told the Los Angeles Times in 1990. “It was written basically as a show of support for my generation of farmers.” However, her audience in Ireland heard the song as a reflection of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. “I think it’s great when that happens when a song is interpreted differently and becomes a universal thing for others,” she said.

“Today I am just sad man. I lost one of my idols,” singer Darius Rucker tweeted. “One of the reasons I am in Nashville. She blew my mind the first time I heard Marie and Omie. And singing with her was my favorite things to do.”