The songwriter whose songs found other singers

Bill LaBounty was born in Wisconsin, grew up in Idaho, and started his first band, Fat Chance, at Boise State University. At nineteen the group signed to RCA Records and recorded one album. He then went solo as a singer-songwriter in the soft rock style, and made six studio albums, four of them on Curb and Warner Bros. Records. His first charting single was a song called “This Night Won't Last Forever”.

It was another singer who made it famous. In 1979 Michael Johnson covered it and had a top 20 pop hit, and in the late 1990s the country group Sawyer Brown recorded it again. This pattern defined LaBounty's work: he wrote songs that other people could sing as their own. Johnson also took “Trail to Your Heart (Sailing Without a Sail)”, which sits among the titles LaBounty is known for, and he also wrote “Look Who's Lonely Now” for Randy Crawford.

In the mid-1980s he married the songwriter Beckie Foster and moved to Nashville, where his writing took a country turn. He co-wrote three number ones for Steve Wariner, “Lynda”, “The Weekend” and “I Got Dreams”, and in 2001 signed a songwriting contract with Curb Publishing. Many of his later songs were written with Foster.

The list of people who have sung his songs is long and mixed: Brooks & Dunn, Lonestar, Shenandoah with Alison Krauss, Peter Cetera, Agnetha Fältskog, Gino Vannelli and Jimmy Buffett. Songs such as “Livin' It Up” and “Dream On” stay close to his own record, but the story of his career is a quiet one of hidden authorship. Plenty of listeners know the tune and have never learned the name of the man who wrote it.