Nanci Griffith was a gifted songwriter who contributed more than a few indelible tunes to the folk/country canon — songs like “Love at the Five and Dime,” “I Wish It Would Rain,” “Gulf Coast Highway” and “Ford Econoline,” to name just a few. Yet Griffith, who died Aug. 13 at 68, was also a gateway.
For starters, Griffith helped incubate talent, a skill befitting someone who taught kindergarten before moving into music full-time. Lyle Lovett, Béla Fleck and Lucy Kaplansky are among the musicians she called on for her albums in the ’80s, before any of them had any real widespread recognition. In the ’90s, she collaborated with the likes of Adam Duritz of Counting Crows (“Going Back to Georgia,” from her 1994 album “Flyer”) and Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish (a version of “Gulf Coast Highway” from 1997’s “Blue Roses from the Moons”), and though both Duritz’s and Rucker’s bands were huge at the time, and considerably better-known than Griffith was, it felt like she was doing them a favor by letting them in on some secret America that exists beyond amphitheaters and pop charts. (In a tweet last week, Rucker credited Griffith as among the reasons he took a turn toward country music.)
Griffith’s voice was bright and sprightly, almost effervescent at times, but it was also deceptively versatile. Though she could sound playful, or naive, when she wanted to, Griffith also knew how play up her Texas accent — see “Summer Wages,” from “Other Voices, Too (A Trip Back to Bountiful)” — and she could make her vocals wistful or steely, as a song required.
It’s also no secret that Griffith had a folk singer’s knack for interpreting other writers’ songs: her 1993 covers collection “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Yet her wide-ranging taste, and easy familiarity with such a wealth of material, came as a revelation when I was in my early 20s and growing out of a steady diet of classic rock. Her work as a song interpreter brought me to artists including Guy Clark, Richard Thompson, Ian & Sylvia, Harlan Howard and the vastly underrated Kate Wolf, whose song “Across the Great Divide” couldn’t have fared better than Griffith’s version on “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” with harmony vocals from Emmylou Harris.
I only managed to see her once in concert, in 2004 at the Calvin Theatre in Northampton as part of Iron Horse Entertainment’s 25th anniversary show. I don’t remember much about it, unfortunately, but the legacy of her music over the past 40-plus years is unforgettable.