Get the latest gossip
Gerry Wood, Former Billboard Editor-in-Chief and Longtime Country Music Journalist, Dies at 87
Gerry Wood, a former Billboard editor-in-chief and longtime country music journalist, has died at age 87.
Wood was Billboard ’s Nashville bureau chief and country editor in 1980 when he was promoted to editor-in-chief of the magazine, resulting in a transfer to the publication’s New York headquarters. Wood’s elevation to editor-in-chief coincided with the explosion of country music in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, when Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson and Alabama were among the top-selling acts in any genre and the film Urban Cowboy became a pop-culture phenomenon. “Some weeks later, when I made my first trip to Nashville, Gerry, now bureau chief, greeted me with a gift basket in my hotel room filled with GooGoo Clusters, Moon Pies, and airplane bottles of Jack Daniel’s.
Or read this on Billboard