Grammy-winning singer Nanci Griffith passes away at 68

The folk singer-songwriter behind songs such as 'Love at the Five and Dive' and 'Speed of the Sound of Loneliness' passed away on Friday morning. However, no cause of death was provided.

Washington: Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith died on Friday in Nashville. She was 68 when she breathed her last.

The folk singer-songwriter behind songs such as ‘Love at the Five and Dive’ and ‘Speed of the Sound of Loneliness’ passed away on Friday morning. However, no cause of death was provided.

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Her management company, Gold Mountain Entertainment, revealed the news of the singer’s demise to Variety.

“It was Nanci’s wish that no further formal statement or press release happen for a week following her passing,” Gold Mountain Entertainment said in a statement.

Regardless of Griffith’s request for a week’s delay before formal statements, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum CEO Kyle Young paid tribute shortly after her death was confirmed on Friday.

“Nanci Griffith was a master songwriter who took every opportunity to champion kindred spirits, including Vince Bell, Elizabeth Cook, Iris DeMent, Julie Gold, Robert Earl Keen, Lyle Lovett,

Eric Taylor and Townes Van Zandt,” Kyle Young said in a statement.

“Her voice was a clarion call, at once gentle and insistent,” Young added.

“Her brilliant album The Last of the True Believers is a template for what is now called Americana music, and her Grammy-winning Other Voices, Other Rooms is a compelling guide to 20th-century folk songs. Nanci offered gifts that no one else could give,” Young further said.
Griffith survived cancer twice in the 1990s. She began her career in 1978 with the independently released ‘There’s a Light Beyond These Woods’, recorded when she was 24, reported Variety.

Nominated for four Grammy Awards throughout her life, her album ‘Other Voices/Other Rooms’ took the award for the contemporary folk album at the 1993 Grammy Awards.

Some of her most notable songs included ‘Across the Great Divide’, ‘Going Back to Georgia’ and ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’. Her songs often celebrated the South.

Griffith was raised in Austin, Texas and performed alongside her backing band The Blue Moon Orchestra. She released a total of 18 albums, including her last one, ‘Intersection’, in 2012. Her most commercially successful records were ‘Lone Star State of Mind’ and ‘Little Love Affairs’.