Johnny Mullins (October 23, 1923, in Barry County, Missouri – September 16, 2009, in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the List of cities in Missouri, third most populous city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County, Missouri, Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 censu ...

) was an American country music songwriter. His earliest success was with a song called "Company's Comin'", which was recorded by

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in 1954. He is most noted for " Blue Kentucky Girl", originally recorded by

Loretta Lynn Loretta Lynn (; April 14, 1932 – October 4, 2022) was an American country music singer and songwriter. In a career spanning six decades, Lynn released multiple gold albums. She had numerous hits such as "Hey Loretta", "The Pill (song), The P ...

and later by

Emmylou Harris Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, bandleader, and activist. She is considered one of the leading music artists behind the country rock genre in the 1970s and the Americana (music), Americana genre ...

, in whose version it was nominated for a

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious ...

for Best Country Song in 1980. His song "

Success Success is the state or condition of meeting a defined range of expectations. It may be viewed as the opposite of failure. The criteria for success depend on context, and may be relative to a particular observer or belief system. One person mi ...

" was also recorded by Loretta Lynn and later by

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, and also by

Sinéad O'Connor Shuhada' Sadaqat (born Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor; , ; 8 December 1966 – 26 July 2023) was an Irish singer, songwriter, record producer and activist. Her debut studio album, ''The Lion and the Cobra'', was released in 1987 and achieve ...

under the title, "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home". Mullins is interviewed and plays short samples from some of his songs in the PBS video, ''Johnny Mullins: Ozarks Songwriter''. While writing songs in his spare time, he kept his day job as a school janitor in Springfield, Missouri, which he held from 1957 until his retirement in 1982. Mullins was inducted into "Missouri Writers Hall of Fame" in 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mullins, Johnny 1923 births 2009 deaths Songwriters from Missouri American country songwriters Country musicians from Missouri People from Barry County, Missouri Musicians from Springfield, Missouri 20th-century American songwriters