Glen Sherley

Glen Sherley, who performed as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, ranked among both the standout achievers and the saddest cases within 1970s country music, even though his professional run extended barely a decade. While serving time at Vacaville, California, after earlier stays in the facilities at Chino, Solidad, San Quentin, and Folsom, he started composing material during the 1960s and mailed a recording of one composition to Johnny Cash. Incarcerated at Folsom when Cash took the stage with “Greystone Chapel,” Sherley found that moment launched his songwriting path. Eddy Arnold soon cut the Sherley number “Portrait Of My Woman,” issuing it as a single that also supplied the title for Arnold’s subsequent album. Those developments prompted a live album by Glen Sherley, captured on January 31, 1971, with the cooperation of California prison officials and issued on Mega Records. Strong sales of that record secured him a songwriting deal through House of Cash, Johnny Cash’s publishing company. He further appeared in the documentary film Flower Out of Place, which documented a concert at Tennessee State Prison and featured him alongside Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, and Roy Clark. By the late 1970s Sherley’s existence had slipped into obscurity and disarray, compounded by a rift with his relatives, and he ended his life during the spring of 1978.