By Corey Conley
For The Hendersonville Standard

Carl Knight is blessed. A glance around the 81-year-old’s Hendersonville home reveals pictures of children, grandchildren, and even one toddling great-grandson cautiously eyeing this reporter through a set of french doors.

Just ask and this country songwriter with hits such as “Heaven Is Just a Touch Away,” “What Sundown Does to You,” and “Long Ago Is Gone” will be the first to tell you–in a low Mississippi drawl that suggests his “South” runs a little deeper than most–just how blessed his life has been.

The Leake County native started out as a sharecropper’s son, but ended up a renowned songwriter who has heard artists like Loretta Lynn, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Pride, and Norma Jean sing his songs on the radio.

His sharecropper parents worked a red clay farm during the Depression, while eight-year-old Carl sold papers and peanuts on the street to help support his family.

He also helped the local convent with odd jobs.

“The Sisters of Mercy at the local convent took a liking to this little boy who was helping with their flower garden and yard work,” Knight recalled.

They liked him so much, in fact, they invited him to attend–for free –their private school, St. Joseph Academy.

It was there he began his life-long love of music. He graduated from St. Joseph in 1949 and got a job at Kraft Foods.

Knight spent his free time writing songs and performing at local clubs. He even recorded an album and had a few minor hits around the southwest. But he got his first big break when Kraft sponsored the “Kraft Music Hall,” featuring the famous TV personality and singer Perry Como.

The experience led to his getting a local weekly TV show in Jackson, and it changed his priorities.

“It set me on fire to write and perform. I left Kraft and opened my own night club, called ‘The Town and Country Club,’” said Knight.

He kept touring and performing, and started making connections with country legends.

He met Johnny Cash during a gig in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Knight, with his slight southern growl and unapologetic sideburns, might even pass as the “Man in Black” in the right light. The two hit it off and remained friends. To this day, he has one of Cash’s guitars (a gift from the man himself) in his collection.

But by far the biggest event in Knight’s career was the time country legend Chet Atkins came down to his local club to watch him play. Atkins was in Jacksonville and had asked where he could hear some good country music. Locals pointed him towards Knight’s club on the edge of town.

Atkins made him a promise.

“He said if I would move to Nashville, he would help me get into the business.”

Eight months later, he was in Nashville. Within the first year, he had 13 songs cut by some of the biggest names in country.

Even today, he still thinks about how he almost missed his chance.

“I almost blew it. He was sitting at the table, and I came off the bandstand doing a set, when a girl caught me coming down the stairs. She said a guy named ‘Chet Atkins’ wanted to speak with me.”

The young Carl Knight thought it was some one’s idea of a joke.

“I said ‘Yeah, yeah, tell old Chet I’ll catch him after awhile.’”

He had a drink and played another set, before the girl caught him again with the same message.

This time, he decided to go for it. Through the smokey room, he looked for this guy that claimed he was country-western star Chet Atkins.

“The rest is history,” says Knight.”

Still, his biggest blessings have nothing to do with music. He has been happily married–twice–and has four children, 12 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.

He met his first wife, Betty, when they were middle-schoolers. They first talked through a fence at St. Joseph’s, and went steady until he graduated, and then they got married. She passed away after 20 great years of marriage, leaving Knight as a single dad.

Eventually he met his second wife, Jeanette, at a neighborhood get-together, and he’s shared his life with her ever since.

Knight is youthful and spritely, with his ease of motion and thick head of swept-back hair. You would never know he has been fighting prostate cancer for 15 years, or that his heart has had five bypasses and four stints after a heart attack years ago. Nor would you guess he’s the rare survivor of a brain hemorrhage as a result of a car accident.

He does not credit granola or proper nutrition.

Ask him why he thinks he’s still writing songs, and he will point a finger to the sky and say, “The Man.”

The cancer, he feels, was a wake up call.

“I was not living right at the time, but I promised Him that, if I make it through this, I’m going to clean up my life.”

2010 closed with a bang for the songwriter. He received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both his home state of Mississippi and the Nashville Songwriter’s Festival.

In December, the Discovery Channel came to his home to include him in a documentary about Tennessee.

With regular doses of his anti-cancer drug–and good southern cooking at his favorite restaurant in Hendersonville, “Our Place” –he’s still writing.

All these years later, Loretta Lynn is still asking for his songs, and he has just sent one of his latest works to Toby Keith.

“With him singing it, it will be a monster,” says Knight with a smile.