Country music songwriter and performer Dean Dillon was born Larry Dean Fynn on March 26, 1955, in Lake City, Tennessee, later renamed Rocky Top. Although he began his career as a performer, he became renowned as a songwriter. His work includes “Tennessee Whiskey” for George Jones and more than 70 songs for George Strait, including Strait’s first hit, “Unwound,” as well as eleven of Strait’s No. 1 country hits. Other songs that Dillon wrote or co-wrote were recorded by Kenny Chesney, Toby Keith, and others. He made some early appearances on the Knoxville television show “Jim Clayton Star Time,” then after high school graduation hitchhiked to Nashville and secured a job as a theme park performer at Opryland. He made his first record under the name Dean Dalton in 1974, then as Dean Rutherford signed with a music publishing company co-owned by Charley Pride. In 1977, Johnny Rodriguez recorded one of Dillon’s songs, but his first success came in 1979 when Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius reached No. 2 on the country charts with “Lying in Love With You.” That year Dillon signed with RCA as a performer, and between 1979 and 1993 he scored 20 hits as an artist, though most of his records struggled on the charts. Two of his singles, “Nobody in His Right Mind Would’ve Left Her” and “Famous Last Words of a Fool,” later became No. 1 hits when recorded by George Strait. When Strait wanted to record “Easy Come, Easy Go,” Dillon let him have it and soon ended his own major label recording career to concentrate on songwriting. “Tennessee Whiskey,” which Dillon co-wrote with Linda Hargrove, became a No. 2 hit for George Jones in 1983 and was later covered by Chris Stapleton on his first solo album; Stapleton’s career was boosted after he and Justin Timberlake performed the song at the 2015 Country Music Association Awards show. Dillon also co-wrote Vern Gosdin’s 1983 No. 1 country hit “Set’ em Up Joe,” which references Ernest Tubb, as well as “Leave Them Boys Alone,” recorded by Hank Williams Jr. and Waylon Jennings with a guest appearance by Tubb. In 2002, Dillon was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and became a 2013 BMI Icon recipient. He lives in Gunnison, Colorado, and in 2017 participated in “Tennessee Whiskey,” a documentary about his life.