American singer-songwriter and author who was part of the outlaw country movement and spent time in the 1970s with Townes Van Zandt, Mickey White, Rex “Wrecks” Bell, Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and “Skinny” Dennis Sanchez.
Dobson released his first album, In Texas Last December, in 1977 through Buttermilk Records. He home-produced four albums, including Save the World (1983) and True West (1986). From 1977 to his last album within his life in 2016, Plenty Good People, Dobson released 23 albums. His last album I Hear Singing was finished posthumously, according to previous agreements by his band, and released on 7 December 2018.
In the late 1980s, Dobson formed the group State of the Heart with Mike Dunbar as producer and Susie Monick as banjo and mandolin player. They began performing around 1987, releasing Live at the Station Inn in 1988 and Hearts and Rivers in 1990. They toured Europe for about six weeks yearly, a tour that Dobson continued taking even after State of the Heart was no longer together.
Dobson co-wrote many songs with friends and fellow songwriters including: “Blue Collar Blues” with Ron Davies; “Hole in my Heart” with Steve Earle; “Long Gone Love Song” with Mickey White; “Love Train,” “She’s Gone to Memphis,” and “Welcome to the Wild Side of Me” with Susanna Clark; “Old Friends” and “So Have I” with Guy and Susanna Clark; “One Bar Town” and “Que se yo?” with Pinto Bennett; “Pony Ride” with Hal Ketchum; “Uncertain Texas” with Rodney Crowell; many songs with Susie Monick; and the album Plenty Good People with W.C. Jameson.
Dobson wrote an account of his years with Townes Van Zandt and others mentioned above, The Gulf Coast Boys, first published in 1990. A second book, Pleasures of the High Rhine — A Texas Singer in Exile, was published in February 2012. He irregularly published a newsletter known over the years as Poor Richard’s Newsletter, Don Ricardo’s Life & Times, and finally Don Ricardo’s Report from the High Rhine. The newsletter – addressed to fans and friends – was in print through Omaha Rainbow and later on his website. A collection of the newsletters from 1978 to 2012 was released as The Years the Wind Blew Away: Don Ricardo’s Life and Times in 2013.
Richard Dobson moved to Switzerland in 1999 where he died in Diessenhofen of a cancer disease on 16 December 2017, aged 75.
Link to Wikipedia biography