Bluegrass songwriter Leroy Drumm died at his home in Waynesboro, Tennessee, on Friday, November 26. He was 74 and had experienced heart problems recently.
Born on September 26, 1936, in Algonac, Michigan, he was a Navy veteran and a retired welder.
However, it is as a songwriter that he is most widely known and, more specifically, for his collaborations with Pete Goble, whom he first met in 1961.
The duo began writing together ten years later and since then their songs have been recorded by such notable artists as The Osborne Brothers, Bluegrass Cardinals, The Country Gentlemen, Doyle Lawson, Jimmy Martin, Larry Sparks, Josh Williams, Don Rigsby, The Eddie Adcock Band, Joe Mullins, Special Consensus, IIIrd Tyme Out, Audie Blaylock and Lost & Found among others.
Together they penned such bluegrass favorites as Georgia Girl, Julianne, You Can Keep Your Nine Pound Hammer, Leaving You and Mobile (Too), Blue Virginia Blue, Natural Thing To Do, Bad Day in Akron, Big Spike Hammer, Tennessee 1949, I’m Only a Phone Call Away, Many Hills of Time, Poet With Wings, She’s Walking Through My Memory, Dixie in My Eye, Circuit Rider, Joe’s Last Train, I’m Only A Phone Call Away, Woman Dressed In Scarlet … the list seems endless.
Another great Drumm/Goble song Colleen Malone, recorded by Hot Rize, won the IBMA’s Song of the Year award in 1991.
Stacy Richardson, the mandolin player with the Muscle Shoals, Alabama, area bluegrass band Hurricane Creek, has been co-writing songs with Drumm for about five years. He described Drumm as “one of the greatest bluegrass lyric writers of all time.”
An online Guest Book is available for friends and fans to post their condolences and remembrances.
