Biography
Born on 18 August 1938 in North Little Rock, Arkansas, Reynolds launched his production career in the United States during the closing years of the 1950s. Working alongside his friend, country singer Dickey Lee, he scored a regional success with the track ‘Dream Boy’. A subsequent stint at Sun Records in Memphis led to a close association with producer Jack Clement, who captured Reynolds performing ‘Through The Eyes Of Love’ for RCA Records in 1960. After military service and a period spent in banking, he supplied the Vogues with the pop hit ‘Five O’Clock World’, quickly establishing himself as both a respected songwriter and a producer of polished recordings. Among his production credits are Crystal Gayle’s ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’ and ‘When I Dream’. Although his songwriting catalogue remains modest because of those production obligations, notable compositions include ‘Dreaming My Dreams’ and ‘I Recall A Gypsy Woman’, both recorded by Waylon Jennings and Don Williams, as well as ‘Somebody Loves You’ for Gayle and ‘We Should Be Together’ for Williams. While Gayle became identified with ‘Wrong Road Again’, Reynolds’s own reading of the song reached number 95 on the US country chart in 1978. Several of his pieces were co-written with Bob McDill, whose material is frequently interpreted by the artists Reynolds produces. In the late 1980s he helped launch Kathy Mattea through his work on ‘Love At The Five And Dime’ and ‘Walk The Way The Wind Blows’. The 1990s brought his greatest commercial achievements via multi-million-selling albums by Garth Brooks, and he has also guided sessions for Daniel O’Donnell. Reynolds entered the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2000.