Musician helped country star Carpenter forge Grammy-winning career

John Jennings, a music producer and blues and folk guitarist who helped launch the career of the Grammy-winning singersongwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter, died Oct. 16 at a hospice centre in Rockville, Md. He was 61.

The cause was kidney cancer, said Tamara Meyer, his companion of 17 years.

Jennings played the bass, keyboard and not least the guitar — acoustic, electric, slide, lap, steel or baritone. “He could play anything,” Carpenter said in an email, “and his knowledge, talent and supreme great taste informed everything he did.”

Jennings, who released a halfdozen solo albums, left his most enduring mark as a producer. He worked on albums for singersongwriters including John Gorka, Iris Dement, Janis Ian and the Indigo Girls. For Carpenter, he produced and performed on at least eight albums and 11 top-10 singles, and he received a Grammy Award nomination for record of the year for co-producing He Thinks He’ll Keep Her (1993).

Jennings was introduced to Carpenter in 1982 through frontman Bill Danoff of the Starland Vocal Band, which had rocketed to fame with the song Afternoon Delight.

The pair dated before realizing they worked better esthetically than romantically. They played shows at local cafés, and Jennings encouraged the shy Carpenter to stop relying on covers and perform her own songs, which blended folk and country styles.

“He had a studio in his basement, and I’d start going over there on the weekends and diddling around,” Carpenter told the New York Times in 1993. “That’s the way John is. John is like, ‘Let’s do it.’ He doesn’t see hurdles. I see hurdles.”

The collaboration led to Hometown Girl, Carpenter’s debut under Columbia Records in 1987. Its folksy sound and longrunning tunes never found a place on mainstream country radio, but Carpenter broke through with State of the Heart (1989) and Shooting Straight in the Dark (1990), uptempo follow-ups that mixed country and pop. Both were co-produced with Jennings.

Down at the Twist and Shout, a single from Shooting Straight, became Carpenter’s first Grammy-winning track. She has since sold more than 12 million records.

Jennings’ solo debut, Buddy, was released by Vanguard records in 1997. This and later albums had limited sales but received widespread acclaim.

Jennings said he was happy to see Carpenter make it big, but never sought the same level of fame for himself. “While I want to be successful, it’s not something I’m going to go out of my way for,” he told the Washington Post in 1997. “I don’t really see it for me.”

He continued: “Had it not been for Chapin, my life would be very different. I’d like to think that, had it not been for me, hers would have been very different, too.”