Nanci Griffith

Nanci Caroline Griffith, (born July 6, 1953 in Seguin, Texas) is an American singer, guitarist and songwriter from Austin, Texas.

Griffith's career has spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country, Folk, and what she terms "folkabilly." Griffith won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her recording, Other Voices, Other Rooms. This album features Griffith covering the songs of artists who are her major influences. One of her better-known songs is "From a Distance" by Julie Gold, although Bette Midler's version achieved greater commercial success. Similarly, other artists have occasionally achieved greater success with Griffith's songs than Griffith herself. For example, Kathy Mattea had a country music top five hit with a 1986 cover of Griffith's "Love at the Five and Dime," and Suzy Bogguss had one of her largest hits with Griffith's and Tom Russell's "Outbound Plane."

Griffith was married to singer-songwriter Eric Taylor from 1976 to 1982. In the early 1990s, she was engaged to singer-songwriter Tom Kimmel, but the couple parted before marrying. Griffith is a survivor of breast cancer which was diagnosed in 1996, and thyroid cancer in 1998.

Griffith has in recent years toured with various other artists including Buddy Holly's band, The Crickets, John Prine, Iris DeMent, Suzy Bogguss and Judy Collins. Griffith has recorded duets with many artists, among them Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, John Prine, Don McLean, Jimmy Buffett, Dolores Keane, Willie Nelson, Adam Duritz (singer of Counting Crows), The Chieftains, and Darius Rucker (singer of Hootie & the Blowfish). She has also contributed background vocals on many other recordings.

Griffith suffered from severe 'writers block' for a number of years after 2004, lasting until 2009 and the release of 'The Loving Kind' album which contained nine self-penned or co-written songs.

As well as her own songs Griffith is well-known for her outstanding versions of other people's material, usually by contemporary singer-songwriters. However she greatly surprised audiences during her early 2010 'Loving Kind' tour by singing, as her last two songs of the encore, 'If I Had a Hammer', Pete Seeger's 1949 song, and 'No Expectations', Jagger-Richards 1968 song from the Rolling Stones 'Beggars Banquet' album.

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