The Rick Dollar Show Podcast-Jerry Salley

Referred to by Billboard Magazine as “One of Music Row’s greatest veteran tunesmiths,” Jerry Salley has had an exceptionally successful, multi award-winning songwriting career.  Nominated in 2019 for the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Salley is the 2018 & 2019 IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Songwriter of the Year and was named the 2003 SESAC Country Music Songwriter of the Year.  An Ohio native, his home state honored his long, illustrious career in 2024 by inducting him into the Ohio Country Music Hall of Fame.  Salley has had over 560 different songs recorded and his songs have sold in excess of 19 million records worldwide.  Writing and singing in Nashville since 1982, he has written multiple hits in country, bluegrass, and gospel music and may well be the most successful songwriter to have earned equal recognition from all three genres of music. Jerry was a 2020 GRAMMY nominated producer in the Gospel Roots category for producing the multi-artist project, Gonna Sing, Gonna Shout, on Billy Blue Records.  He also produced the popular Dolly Parton single, a new version of the old Gospel Hymn, “In The Sweet By And By”, released as part of the Country Faith Bluegrass project in 2021, which received two 2022 IBMA Awards (Gospel Recording of the Year and Collaborative Recording of the Year), and the 2022 Dove Award for Bluegrass/Country/Roots Song of the Year.  He currently has a popular song, “It Takes A Woman”, on the new Chris Stapleton album Higher.

Jerry’s country music successes began in the late 1980s when the group Wild Rose recorded “Breakin’ New Ground”.  Since then, countless country music stars have recorded his songs, including Reba McEntire (“I’m Gonna Take That Mountain”,  “Close To Crazy”), John Anderson (“I Fell In The Water”), Wade Hayes (“How Do You Sleep At Night”) , Chris Stapleton (“Outlaw State Of Mind” on the Grammy award winning quadruple-platinum album Traveller), Toby Keith, Sara Evans, Patty Loveless, Joe Nichols, Darryl Worley, Travis Tritt, Tracy Lawrence, Neal McCoy, Mark Chesnutt and many, many more.  Internationally, he has penned no less than nine #1 Country hits in Australia.

As part of a trio with friends Larry Cordle and Carl Jackson, Jerry recorded the song “You’re Running Wild” on the Louvin Brothers Tribute on Universal South Records. Entitled Livin’, Lovin’, Losin’ – Songs of the Louvin Brothers, the album features numerous country music stars singing songs made famous by the legendary duo. The project won the 2003 GRAMMY for Country Album of the Year.

In the bluegrass genre, Jerry was named the 2018 and 2019 IBMA Songwriter of the Year and has had hundreds of songs, including numerous chart-toppers, recorded.  He was thrilled to have co-written three songs on The SteelDrivers GRAMMY award winning album, The Muscle Shoals Recordings (“A Long Way Down”, “The River Runs Red”, “6 Feet Away”), and a song on the Del McCoury Band GRAMMY winning album The Streets of Baltimore (“The Butler Brothers”).  Other bluegrass groups who have recorded Jerry’s songs include The Osborne Brothers, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, Rhonda Vincent, Lonesome River Band, Balsam Range, Seldom Scene, Flatt Lonesome, IIIrd Tyme Out, Larry Stevenson, Donna Ulisse, Dave Adkins and many others.  Salley is a multiple IBMA Song of the Year nominee, and his song “All Dressed Up”, recorded by Joe Mullin and The Radio Ramblers, won the IBMA Gospel Recorded Song Of The Year award in 2016.  Jerry is an eight-time IBMA Award winner, which includes receiving the 2006 IBMA Album of the Year award for his contribution (as an artist) to the Celebration Of Life album.