Lee Clayton (born Billy Hugh Shotts; October 29, 1942 – June 12, 2023) was an American songwriter and musician. He notably wrote Waylon Jennings' 1972 outlaw country song "Ladies Love Outlaws".
Born Billy Hugh Shatz in Russelville, Alabama, he grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He first started to play harmonica and guitar at age of 7, encouraged by his father (a country music fan), and received his first steel guitar at age of 9. He also took guitar lessons. After just one year of playing the guitar, he got to play a radio gig on “Saturday Night Radio Show”, where he played “Steel Guitar Rag” by Leon McAuliffe. Not long after this, young Lee took a break of playing the guitar until he was 16 years old.
Just before he graduated from college, he got married, and it was time to put guitar down again. Clayton got a regular job, and was ready to settle down. Shortly after he felt that his life was boring, so he decided to get some flight lessons to fill the gap in his life. Within a year he had divorced from his wife and joined the US Air Force as a trainee pilot in 1965, and after working three years as a pilot it was time to get back to music again. He moved to Nashville in 1969 and began his career as a songwriter. In 1972 he wrote "Ladies Love Outlaws" for Waylon Jennings. In 1973 he released his debut album for MCA simply titled Lee Clayton, with which, as Clayton would later say, he was very dissatisfied.
Clayton left Nashville for Joshua Springs, California, but continued to pen songs for other artists; among his most notable contributions were Jerry Jeff Walker's "Lone Wolf" and Willie Nelson's "If You Could Touch Her at All." His success as a songwriter encouraged him to return to Nashville, and he signed a solo deal with Capitol in 1977. His first album with the label was 1978's Border Affair but his most successful album was 1979's Naked Child. The songs' style was reminiscent of Bob Dylan and the single, "I Ride Alone", became very notable. In 1979, he went on a big world tour, which became a huge success. In 1981 he released his fourth studio album, The Dream Goes On, which had a harder sound than his previous work.
Then he abruptly quit the music business, instead devoting his energies to writing; the '80s produced two autobiographical books and a play, Little Boy Blue. Clayton did eventually return to recording with Another Night, a live album recorded on September 9, 1988, at the Cruise Cafe, Oslo, Norway. In 1990 The Highwaymen, an outlaw country supergroup comprising Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, had a minor hit with a song of his, "Silver Stallion", which had previously appeared on Border Affair (1978). In 1994, he released the album Spirit of the Twilight. Cat Power also covered "Silver Stallion" on the 2008 cover album Jukebox.
In 2008 a new acoustic song "We The People" was 'released' on YouTube, after which little was heard from him until according to Josie Kuhn, Nashville singer and friend, he took his own life at a motel room in White House, Tennessee on June 12, 2023. Kuhn is the only source who published his death on her Facebook page. A sad picture emerges of a man who died at the age of 80 in complete anonymity and loneliness.
The fact that no significant media has paid attention to his death is somewhat understandable. Clayton had fallen completely into oblivion. Aside from performing at local bars in Nashville, he had not been a part of the music industry for years. A few weeks after Kuhn's message, the administrators of his website confirmed his death, although a cause of death was not mentioned.
(Eited from Wikipedia, AllMusic & Heaven Magazine.nl)