Richard Dobson

Nanci Griffith, who interpreted his song “The Ballad of Robin Wintersmith,” once labeled Richard Dobson the “Hemingway of country music.” Among Texas tunesmiths celebrated for their literary bent, he ranks among the most distinctive. David Allan Coe preserved “Piece of Wood and Steel” on one of his albums, while Guy Clark chose “Old Friends,” a song Dobson wrote with Suzanne Clark, as the title track for his 1988 release.

Born in Tyler, Texas, Dobson nursed ambitions of becoming a novelist from his earliest years. After receiving a Bachelor of Science in Spanish from Georgetown University in 1966, he served two years with the Peace Corps in Chile, completing the novels Seasons and Companions and The Gulf Coast Boys plus several articles that appeared in the British fanzine Omaha Rainbow.

Music ultimately redirected those literary goals. Playing guitar and composing songs since he turned nineteen, he became a fixture in the late-1960s and early-1970s Texas songwriter circle that included Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Mickey Newbury, and honorary Texan Jerry Jeff Walker.

His first album, In Texas Last December, appeared in 1976, funded by wages earned on shrimp boats and oil rigs; it contained “Baby Ride Easy,” later recorded as a duet by Carlene Carter and Dave Edmunds.

Although he kept issuing records that never translated into major commercial breakthroughs, Dobson relocated to Europe in the early 1990s. He cut the 1999 album Global Village Garage in Germany. Swiss label Brambus reissued his early work in 2003, and his first novel, The Gulf Coast Boys, reached print in 1998.