John Hartford; Penned Pop Hit ‘Gentle on My Mind’

John Hartford, who wrote one of the most popular songs in modern pop music history and then retreated from the spotlight to pilot a riverboat and play his beloved bluegrass music, died Monday in Nashville of cancer. He was 63.

Hartford’s “Gentle on My Mind” became a Top 40 hit for Glen Campbell in 1968 (an earlier release of the single in 1967 peaked at No. 62), but the song far transcended that modest chart showing, distilling in a mainstream-friendly manner the era’s folk-pop sensibility and the generation’s spirit of yearning and wanderlust.

Campbell won two Grammys for the performance, and Hartford also won two: for best country song and for his own recording of the tune. “Gentle on My Mind” was eventually recorded by hundreds of artists, including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Aretha Franklin, and has been broadcast on radio or television more than 6 million times, ranking second to the Beatles’ “Yesterday,” according to the music licensing organization BMI.

“He was a great writer, and one of the finest and most innovative banjo players ever,” Campbell told the Associated Press. “I do the song every night in my show on the road, and every time I do, I think of John.”

Hartford parlayed the success into a role as a writer and performer on the Smothers Brothers’ groundbreaking CBS television variety show and on the “Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour,” which replaced it. Watching Hartford play his hit on a banjo equipped with a fishbowl and live fish, viewers got a taste of the quirky aesthetic that would soon lead Hartford away from Hollywood.

Hartford was born in New York City and grew up in St. Louis, where he became enchanted with Mississippi steamboats and traditional music, especially the bluegrass of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. He studied art, worked as a riverboat deckhand and became a disc jockey, then moved to Nashville and worked as a session musician. In 1966, he signed with RCA Records, which released his debut album, “John Hartford Looks at Life,” that year. Its follow-up, “Earthwords & Music,” introduced “Gentle on My Mind.”

Hartford could have extended his heady career on network TV, but he turned down a CBS offer to star in a detective series, returning to Nashville to pursue a more low-key, eclectic career. He was part of the city’s bohemian scene of young singer-songwriters, spearheaded by Kris Kristofferson, and later in the ‘70s settled into the world of folk and bluegrass. In 1977, he won another Grammy for “Mark Twang,” in the ethnic/traditional album category.

He also took breaks from music to pursue his other passion. A licensed riverboat pilot, for a time he averaged two days a week for half the year guiding the Julia Belle Swain on its 67-mile tourist run on the Mississippi. Hartford spent recent years on a variety of recording projects and music instruction videos. He also researched and wrote a book on fiddler Ed Haley.

He returned to the charts unexpectedly this year as a key contributor to the soundtrack of the movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou.” The album of traditional and traditional-style songs surprised the pop world when it went to No. 1 on the country chart in February and sold more than 1 million copies.

Survivors include his wife, Marie Hartford, and son Jamie, a singer-songwriter.