Nanci Griffith

Griffith was born in Seguin Texas and her career has spanned a variety of musical genres predominantly country folk and what she terms folkabilly Griffith won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her recording Other Voices Other Rooms This album features Griffith covering the songs of artists who were her major influences One of her betterknown songs is From a Distance which was written and composed by Julie Gold although Bette Midlers version achieved greater commercial success Similarly other artists have occasionally achieved greater success than Griffith herself with songs that she wrote or cowrote For example Kathy Mattea had a country music top five hit with a 1986 cover of Griffiths Love at the Five and Dime and Suzy Bogguss had one of her largest hits with Griffiths and Tom Russells Outbound Plane In 1994 Griffith teamed up with Jimmy Webb to contribute the song If These Old Walls Could Speak to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot Country  produced by the Red Hot Organization Griffith was a survivor of breast cancer which was diagnosed in 1996 and thyroid cancer in 1998