About Harlan
Awards and Honors
The rooms he was inducted into, the plaques on the wall, and the recognition that came from the people who knew exactly how hard the work was.
The halls
Inducted
Country Music Hall of Fame
Induction
Elected in 1997 and inducted alongside Brenda Lee and Cindy Walker. Harlan wrote the tribute for Cindy Walker's induction that same night, calling her his mentor and the Queen of Country Writers.
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame
Induction
Inducted in 1973, in the fourth class the hall ever elected, alongside Jack Clement, Don Gibson, Roger Miller and Willie Nelson. He was forty five years old and had been in Nashville thirteen years.
Songwriters Hall of Fame
Induction
The national hall, in New York, elected him the same year Nashville did. Two halls of fame in twelve months, thirty seven years after he arrived in town with a suitcase.
Grammy Hall of Fame
Recordings inducted
Two recordings of Harlan's songs sit in the Grammy Hall of Fame: Buck Owens' "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail," inducted in 1999, and Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces," inducted in 2001.
On the shelf
Awards and titles
Grammy Awards
Nomination
Nominated for Best Country Song in 1967 for "The Streets of Baltimore," written with Tompall Glaser. He never took a Grammy home himself. Two artists did with his songs: Ray Charles for "Busted" in 1964, and Aaron Neville with Trisha Yearwood for "I Fall to Pieces" in 1995.
BMI Awards
Awards
Forty five BMI Country Awards, four Pop Awards and two R&B Awards. Ten of them came in 1961 alone, off thirty nine songs on BMI's most-performed list that year.
Songwriter of the Year
Titles
Billboard named him Songwriter of the Year in 1962 and again in 1963. BMI named him Country Songwriter of the Year in 1961, 1963 and 1967.
NSAI President's Keystone Award
Award
The Nashville Songwriters Association International's honor for significant contribution to the betterment of all songwriters. Given to the man who spent his lunch hours teaching the juveniles.
BMI Robert J. Burton Award
Award
BMI's most-performed country song of the year, for "Blame It on Your Heart," written with Kostas. He was sixty six. BMI counted almost five million performances of it by 2010.
Academy of Country Music Pioneer Award
Award, posthumous
Presented in June 2007, five years after his death, alongside honors to Dolly Parton, Buck Owens and Waylon Jennings.
Every year since
The tradition
The Harlan Howard Birthday Bash
Tradition
An all-star guitar pull in BMI's Nashville parking lot on the Tuesday nearest his September 8 birthday, thrown for more than a decade and run as a benefit for songwriter causes. The rule: you had to play two songs you wrote.
From the archive
The nights themselves
Two halls of fame in a single year, and the BMI rooms where the awards were handed over.
