Songwriter and solo artist Marshall Chapman came up in the Nashville music scene during the rise of outlaw country in the early '70s. A country-rocker with eclectic stylistic tendencies, she had a hit in 1977 with the song "Somewhere South of Macon" from her debut album, Me, I'm Feelin' Free. Eventually finding a complementary songwriting partner in none other than Jimmy Buffet, she contributed to his Last Mango in Paris LP in 1985 and later joined his touring band. Also in '85, Sawyer Brown scored a country hit with her song "Betty's Bein' Bad." While her creations were being covered by the likes of Conway Twitty and Joe Cocker, Chapman continued to release her own albums, delivering her seventh full-length, It's About Time, on Buffett's Margaritaville label in 1995. She became an author in 2003 with the publication of a memoir, and her tenth studio album, Big Lonesome, appeared in 2011. Still recording into her seventies, she issued the covers album Songs I Can't Live Without in 2020. Marshall Chapman grew up a member of one of the most well-known families in Spartanburg County, South Carolina -- the Chapmans owned the local cotton mill -- and she loved both sports and music from a young age. In 1957, a young Marshall was taken to the Carolina Theatre in downtown Spartanburg to see Elvis Presley perform, and it changed her life forever. A natural athlete, she placed second in the South Carolina Junior Girls' golf tournament, and once outscored the entire opposing team while taking part in a spirited prep basketball game. When she arrived at Nashville's prestigious Vanderbilt University in 1967, where she would major in French, it was the music, not athletics or languages, that captured her soul. Outlaw country music was beginning to sweep Music City, and Marshall found herself performing at the Exit/In with the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings, and Billy Joe Shaver. She graduated from Vanderbilt in 1971. Her debut album, Me, I'm Feelin' Free, with its hit single "Somewhere South of Macon," arrived on Epic Records in 1977, about the same time the Marshall Tucker Band were forging a name for themselves on a world scale. She followed up with Jaded Virgin in 1978 and Marshall in 1979 for Epic before moving to Rounder Records. In 1982, Rounder released her fourth long-player, Take It on Home. Meanwhile, her songs were being recorded by artists including Joe Cocker, Emmylou Harris, and Olivia Newton-John, just to name a few. Chapman later took off with a boyfriend for Key West, where she ran into Jimmy Buffett, whom she had met ten years earlier in Texas. The two songwriters hit it off and began collaborating on tracks that ended up on Buffett's 1985 album Last Mango in Paris. That same year, Sawyer Brown had a Billboard Top Five country hit with her song "Betty's Bein' Bad." Back home in Nashville, Marshall was reinvigorated by her experiences in Key West and inspired to start her own label, Tall Girl (Chapman is just over six feet tall). She launched it with 1987's Dirty Linen and toured that year as a guitarist and backup vocalist for Buffett's Coral Reefer Band. By then, John Hiatt and Tanya Tucker were among those added to the long list of performers using Chapman's songs. Inside Job arrived on Tall Girl in 1991, and in 1995, Buffett's label Margaritaville put out Chapman's first-ever live album, It's About Time, as the label's debut release. It captured a performance at the Tennessee State Prison for Women a couple of nights before Halloween in 1993. She followed it with Love Slave (Tall Girl/Margaritaville) in 1996, and wouldn't return with more music until 2003, when Tall Girl issued the companion album to her memoir Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller (St. Martin's Press). A second live outing, Live! At the Bitter End, followed in 2004. Chapman's ninth studio album, Mellowicious!, saw release in April 2006, and, taking another break to write a book, she interviewed the likes of Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, and Miranda Lambert for They Came to Nashville, published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2010. The next year's album Big Lonesome was dedicated to her friend, co-writer, and former Coral Reefer bandmate Tim Krekel, who died of cancer in 2009. Returning co-producer Michael Utley and her backing band from Big Lonesome, the diverse Blaze of Glory followed in 2013. Chapman's 12th studio album, 2020's Songs I Can't Live Without, was a covers set that included works by influences such as Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, and Carole King. ~ Michael B. Smith & Marcy Donelson