Dennis Linde

Dennis Linde (pronounced LIN-dee, March 18, 1943 – December 22, 2006) was an American musician and songwriter based in Nashville who has had over 250 of his songs recorded. He is best known for writing the 1972 Elvis Presley song, "Burning Love", an international hit that has been featured in at least five motion pictures. In 1994, Linde won BMI's "Top Writer Award" and received four awards as BMI's most-performed titles for that year. He never liked publicity, and shunned awards shows to the extent of having family members collect his awards for him. He wrote both words and music for most of his songs, rarely collaborating with co-writers. He earned 14 BMI "Million-Air" songs (a song played on the air one million times). In 2001, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Linde wrote the following top-5 U.S. country hits: "Long Long Texas Road" (Roy Drusky, 1970), "The Love She Found in Me" (Gary Morris, 1983), "Walkin' a Broken Heart" (Don Williams, 1985), "Then It's Love" (Don Williams, 1986), "I'm Gonna Get You" (Eddy Raven, 1988), "In a Letter to You" (Eddy Raven, 1989), "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" (Mark Chesnutt, 1992), "It Sure Is Monday" (Mark Chesnutt, 1993), "Callin' Baton Rouge" (Garth Brooks, 1993), and "John Deere Green" (Joe Diffie, 1993). He also wrote "Goodbye Earl", a gold single for The Chicks in 2000.

Linde died in 2006 at age 63 of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Sixteen years after his death, Ashley McBryde released a concept album entitled Lindeville, a tribute to Linde's work. The album was nominated for Best Country Album of 2022 at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards.

Linde was born in Abilene, Texas, but lived in St. Louis from age 13 to age 26 (1956 to 1969). His stepfather was a sales executive with Colgate-Palmolive company. The family moved from Abilene to San Angelo, then Miami and finally St. Louis. His family was not especially musical, but they all loved to sing. "I didn't even start in music until I was 15, but I had a feeling I could play guitar", Linde told The New York Times in 2005. His grandmother had given him a guitar at that age and he taught himself to play. He joined a St. Louis group called the "Starlighters" playing R&B and rock. He graduated from St. Louis' Normandy High School about 1960. He did not attend college and knew he was a prime candidate for the military draft. He enlisted in the Missouri Air National Guard.

Linde drove a Corvette and at age 24 he had so many speeding tickets that his driver's license was revoked. At this time he had a job driving a delivery truck for a dry cleaning company. Without his license he could not drive the truck, so he lost his job. At home with time on his hands, he played guitar, worked out arrangements, and began writing songs. Linde played in a band with St. Louis bandleader Bob Kuban who saw promise in Linde's songwriting abilities, and suggested he explore songwriting in Nashville. Linde visited there several times and pitched his songs to Bob Beckham, the CEO of Combine Music Publishing. In those days, writers from out of town sometimes stayed at Beckham's home. On one of his several visits, Linde caught the eye of Beckham's daughter Pam, who happened to be home from college. A romance was struck and Linde made the move to Nashville in 1969 to work for Combine.

Linde and Pam were married in 1970. They subsequently had three children.

Linde found a perfect fit at Combine— it allowed him to flourish alongside writers and artists like Dolly Parton and Mickey Newbury. Linde said, "Bob Beckham's building at Combine was a rickety old two-story place, and Kris [Kristofferson] lived in an upstairs room next door. I just had never run into so many talented people". His first hit about feeling alienated from the cultural and political polarization of the late 60s was "Where Have All the Average People Gone" recorded by Roger Miller. The song peaked at #14 on the Country Charts in December 1969. After writing for Combine for about a year, his first major hit was "Long Texas Road" recorded by Roy Drusky. That same year, 1970, Roger Miller recorded Linde's "Tom Green County Fair".

The following year (1971), he wrote "Burning Love" which became a worldwide hit when it was recorded by Elvis Presley. The song was written, Linde said, "on a lark". He had just bought a set of drums and was putting a drum track on tape at his home studio, sort of learning to play them, and the words and melody came to him. He then overdubbed the other instruments and vocals on his four-track machine (he played and sang all parts) and created a demo of the song. He completed it in 20 minutes. He credits the inspiration in part to the fact that he was a newlywed at the time and said " 'Burning Love' was a great newlywed title". The first singer to record it was Arthur Alexander on the Warner Brothers label in late 1971. Alexander was a fellow songwriter at Combine at the time; his album contained three other Linde compositions. Soon after Alexander's, Elvis Presley released a version which eclipsed it quickly— Presley's making the top ten on both sides of the Atlantic and scarcely missed becoming No. 1 in the U.S. in October 1972. It was Presley's last major hit. The song's worldwide success greatly increased Combine's profitability as well as Linde's stature as a songwriter. Elvis recorded two more of Linde's compositions, "I Got a Feelin' in My Body" and "For the Heart".