Artists

It's September 1968 and folk/pop performer Jim Chesnut records two Herman Nelson compositions for Sonobeat co-founder and producer Bill Josey Sr. About To Be Woman is a folk ballad described by Herman as a modern love song. Leaves is a plaintive commentary on everyday life – as relevant at the moment you're reading this as when Jim records it in '68. The songs are released in November as Sonobeat stereo single PV-s112, which is Jim's recording debut. Jim's single is issued in a picture sleeve designed by Sonobeat co-founder Rim Kelley; it's the last custom sleeve Sonobeat will issue. At the time his single is released, Jim, a Midland, Texas, native, is attending The University of Texas in Austin, where he and Rim are classmates.

Jim returns to Sonobeat in April 1969 to record a series of pop and country covers including By the Time I Get To Phoenix, The Impossible Dream, They Call The Wind Maria, Woman Woman, Games People Play, Where's The Playground Susie, Husbands And Wives, and Wives aAd Lovers (the latter two songs are different, although it may sound as if there's a typo: Husbands and Wives is a Roger Miller country tune, and Wives and Lovers is a Burt Bachrach-Hal David pop song originally made a hit by Jack Jones). Producer Bill Josey Sr. appears to be trying to build a commercial album release with Jim, but regardless whether that's the goal, none of Jim's May '69 recordings are ever released. As a side note, Jim's April '69 sessions may mark the first time in Austin recorded music history that an artist is backed by "session musicians", much in the same way the famous Los Angeles-based Wrecking Crew, consisting of a revolving door of talented musicians, provides the backing tracks for hundreds if not thousands of rock and pop artists from the '60s through the '80s. Because Jim is a solo act with no band of his own, Bill Sr. assembles a makeshift band from the large pool of Austin musicians, including Sonobeat regular Mike Waugh on bass, to record Jim's backing tracks.

Although Jim records no original songs of his own for Sonobeat, his career as both singer and composer in his own right blossoms in the '70s after he moves to Nashville and takes up residence as a staff writer for world-famous music publisher Acuff-Rose. A Grammy nominee for his composition Show Me A Sign, Jim records two albums and more than a dozen singles for the MGM, ABC, and Capitol labels, plays clubs and concerts across the country. Suddenly abandoning music in 1982, Jim shifts gears, launching a career as a certified public manager (and on the side operating an audiovisual and graphics production business) in San Antonio, Texas. Twenty-six years later, in 2008, Jim returns to music, but just as his rebooted singing and songwriting career is reaching a new crescendo, he gets a life-changing shock: in 2017 he's diagnosed with a malignant tumor under his tongue. Due in large part to quality medical treatment and Jim's extraordinary fortitude and positive attitude, he makes a successful recovery. By 2018, he completes and releases a new album, boldly titled I Sure Do Miss My Hair, from which the country single Rode Hard And Put Away Wet is pulled. In September 2018, the single reaches #1 on IndieWorld Country Record Report's top hits chart. And, in January 2019, Jim resumes his previously-interrupted graduate studies at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, focusing on non-pharmacological methods for reducing stress in cancer patients, earning a Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in 2020 and winning the department award for outstanding research. Today, Jim is putting the finishing touches on a health and lifestyle guide entitled I Sure Do Miss My Hair: Living with Cancer (and Other Crap That Happens) that presents his Power Living formula for managing stress. For more about Jim's post-Sonobeat career and current activities, visit his personal website.