The only child of Joseph Henry Burnett Jr. and Hazel Perkins Burnett,[2] Burnett was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1948, and raised in Fort Worth, Texas.[3] His grandfather worked as secretary for the Southern Baptist Convention. His father wanted to be a pro athlete and was courted by the Brooklyn Dodgers, but instead, he got a job in Fort Worth with the Tandy Corporation. Burnett was brought up in the Episcopal Church of his mother. He forgot the origin of his nickname, which he uses without a dash.
He also learned about music through his friend, Stephen Bruton. Bruton's father was a jazz drummer who owned a music store on the Texas Christian University campus, where the boys spent many weekends. Bruton, a banjoist, revealed his interest in bluegrass music and field recordings from the 1920s and 1930s. Burnett was enamored with the live version of the song "Wrought Iron Rag" by the Dixieland revival band Wilbur de Paris and His New New Orleans Jazz. The boys would sneak into clubs to hear bands.[4]: 12
At around the same age, Burnett picked up the guitar. Overwhelmed by seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, he started garage bands with Bruton. After graduating from high school in 1965, they spent most of their time at Sound City, a recording studio in the basement of a radio station where Burnett became fascinated by recording. Forming the band The Loose Ends and adopting the stage name Jon T. Bone, Burnett wrote and recorded a 1966 single "Free Soul"/"He's A Nobody". The b-side briefly charted on local Fort Worth radio station KFJZ, and the single was picked up for national distribution by Mala Records, though it made no national chart listings. A second Loose Ends single ("Dead End Kid"/"Verses") appeared on Bell Records in 1967, but didn't chart regionally or nationally. This 1967 single was written and co-produced by Burnett (still using the alias "Jon T. Bone"), and was his first production credit.
Burnett's parents had divorced when he was in high school, and his father, with whom he was living, died in 1967. He attended Texas Christian University briefly, then dropped out to work as an artists and repertoire (A&R) agent.[4]: 13–15
Pursuing music
Burnett (as J. Henry Burnett) produced and played drums on "Paralyzed", the novelty hit by the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.[5][4]: 16 He also worked as producer on other work by LSC as "Jay Burnett". He then, credited as Joseph Burnett, produced the only album by the pseudonymous group Whistler, Chaucer, Detroit, and Greenhill (The Unwritten Works of Geoffrey, Etc.). Though he was not a group member, Burnett contributed four songs to the album as a writer, and also appeared as a musician. (Uni, 1968).[6][4]: 17
When the Revue ended, Burnett and two other members of Dylan's band, David Mansfield and Steven Soles, formed The Alpha Band,[3] which released three albums: The Alpha Band (1976), Spark in the Dark (1977), and The Statue Makers of Hollywood (1978).[4]: 35–37
Burnett and singer-songwriter Sam Phillips were married in 1989 and divorced in 2004. He produced many of her albums, including Martinis & Bikinis and Cruel Inventions. He married Callie Khouri in 2006.[4]: 195 He has three daughters, including one from his marriage to Phillips.[2]
Solo work
Burnett released several solo albums, although he did not score any major Hot 100 hits. In 1980, Burnett released his first post-Alpha Band solo album, Truth Decay, produced by Reggie Fisher, on the Takoma Records label. Truth Decay was a roots rock album described by the Rolling Stone Record Guide as "mystic Christian blues". In 1982, his Trap Door EP (also produced by Reggie Fisher), released on Warner Bros. Records, yielded the song "I Wish You Could Have Seen Her Dance". Burnett toured after the release of Trap Door, opening several dates for The Who, leading a band that featured Mick Ronson on guitar. His 1983 album Proof Through the Night,[1] whose song "When the Night Falls" got some FM airplay, and his 1987 album The Talking Animals were more in the vein of 1980s new wave music, while his self-titled 1986 album was an album of acoustic country music. His 1992 album The Criminal Under My Own Hat tended toward adult album alternative music.
Proof Through the Night was reissued by Rhino Records' Handmade Music in a limited edition of 5,000 on May 29, 2007, in an expanded version. The double CD also included the EPs Trap Door and Behind the Trap Door.[8] In 2006, he released two albums. The True False Identity was his first album of new songs since 1992, and Twenty Twenty – The Essential T Bone Burnett was a 40-song career retrospective.
In 1985, Burnett collaborated with Elvis Costello on the single "The People's Limousine", using the moniker "The Coward Brothers".[1] In 1987, he produced Roy Orbison's two-record album, In Dreams: The Greatest Hits and two songs of Mystery Girl. Also in 1997, he wrote songs for the Sam Shepard play The Tooth of Crime: Second Dance, which premiered off-Broadway in New York City with Vincent D'Onofrio and Kirk Acevedo. An album of these songs, Tooth of Crime, was released in May 2008, featuring guitarist Marc Ribot, Sam Phillips and David Poe, whose self-titled debut Burnett also produced that year. According to Burnett, he was inspired by the music of Skip James while composing songs for the updated version of Shepard's play.[9]
In April 2006, he announced that his first concert tour in nearly two decades would begin on May 16 in Chicago at The Vic Theatre. Around the same time, jazz singer Cassandra Wilson released an album of blues songs, Thunderbird (2006), which was produced by Burnett. He wrote one of the album's songs and co-wrote another with Ethan Coen. He produced music for the remake of the film All the King's Men.
In 2006, he produced Brandi Carlile's The Story album, the title song of which became a minor hit and was featured on a special broadcast of ABC-TV's Grey's Anatomy. Carlile's guitarist and bassist, twins Tim and Phil Hanseroth, respectively, used instruments from Burnett's private collection during the "live" recordings in Vancouver, British Columbia.
In early 2008, Pete Townshend announced that Burnett was to go into the studio that fall to help produce an all-covers album for The Who.[10] However, on a May 15, 2008, episode of the NPR radio show All Songs Considered, Burnett threw that project into question. He stated that Townshend had indicated in a blog that he was putting all his projects on hold.[11]
Burnett produced a collaboration album by Elton John and Leon Russell. John, Russell, and Bernie Taupin (John's lyricist) wrote songs together in late 2009. The album, The Union, was recorded in January 2010 and released in October 2010.
In 2010, Burnett produced Gregg Allman's album Low Country Blues, released in January 2011.[14]
In 2016, T Bone produced Jupiter Calling by the Corrs; a record that received mixed reviews, but encapsulated the core of their sound and songwriting ability.[16]
Burnett also produced and wrote Ringo Starr's January 2025 country music album Look Up.[19]
Code
In 2008, it was reported that Burnett "started a new venture called Code, which aims to do for music what THX did for movie-theater sound: set standards that ensure the best possible quality."[20] He is opposed to the trend of brighter and more compressed processing, sufficiently so, that he essentially retired from the music business around 1995–1996 and pursued an opportunity to work in theater with Sam Shepard, leading to his work on several films.[21]
The audio format known as Code involves the simultaneous release of multiple sound formats, thus avoiding much of the processing which happens when sound is converted from one format to another. The first album produced with Code was Life, Death, Love and Freedom (2008) by John Mellencamp.[20]
In 2000, Burnett produced the soundtrack and wrote the score for the Coen Brothers film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. The award-winning soundtrack featured music from Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley, Gillian Welch, and others performing traditional American folk music, blues and bluegrass—reminiscent of Burnett's 1986 self-titled release. The album was a hit, garnering numerous industry awards from the Grammys, the Academy of Country Music,[22] and the Country Music Association.[citation needed] The album was a commercial success and sold almost eight million copies, according to Billboard.[23]
A documentary film, Down from the Mountain, was made of a benefit concert of the soundtrack performed by the artists on the album; Burnett figures prominently in the film. For producing the soundtrack albums for these two films, and for his wife Sam Phillips's album Fan Dance, Burnett won the 2002 Grammy Award for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical. Burnett went on to produce the less popular gospel soundtrack to the Coens' The Ladykillers.
In 2005, he worked with actors Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon for their singing roles as Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash in the film Walk the Line. Witherspoon won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film, giving special thanks to Burnett in her speech for "helping her realize her lifelong dream of being a country music singer". He also produced that film's soundtrack album and wrote its score.
In 2012, he was the executive music producer for The Hunger Games soundtrack, and wrote the track "Safe and Sound" himself.[citation needed] In 2013, he was the executive music producer for the Coen brothers' film Inside Llewyn Davis.[citation needed]
Real estate development
With Bert Mathews, Burnett is the co-founder of Cloud Hill Partnership, a company that planned to redevelop Herschel Greer Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee.[25] The proposed redevelopment of the 21-acre (8.5 ha) site included music and art space, a community center, open park space and affordable housing.[26] The Cloud Hill proposal was abandoned in January 2018 after archaeologists determined that undisturbed areas on the edge of the Greer property, but not part of the stadium itself, were the unmarked burial sites of slaves forced to build the adjacent Fort Negley.[27]
Best Compilation Soundtrack Album for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2001), Cold Mountain (2004), Walk the Line (2006), Crazy Heart (2010)
Best Contemporary Folk/Americana Album: Raising Sand (2008)
^Specifically, 2001 Album of the Year, and 2001 Vocal Event of the Year (albeit neither song nor single of the year), cf Academy of Country Music Awards.
^Jessen, Wade (January 29, 2015). "Luke Bryan's 'Party' Still Rocking, Sam Hunt's Album Holds at No. 1". Billboard. Retrieved July 19, 2015. HE DON'T NEED YOUR ROCKING CHAIR: ((subsection title, allcaps in original)) At 87 years young, first-generation country and bluegrass star Ralph Stanley becomes the oldest living artist to score a top 20 entry on Top Country Albums, as Ralph Stanley & Friends: Man of Constant Sorrow bows at No. 14 with 3,000 copies sold. Previously that distinction belonged to comic legend George Burns, who reached No. 12 on the March 15, 1980 list with I Wish I Was Eighteen Again. Burns was 84 at the time. Stanley, a highly venerated and influential vocal and banjo stylist, won the 2002 Grammy Award for best country male vocal performance for a new version of Dock Boggs' traditional Appalachian folk ballad "O Death", recorded for the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. That set ruled Top Country Albums for a whopping 35 weeks in 2001-02 and has sold 7.9 million copies.
