Country music’s loss: Jo Walker-Meador, who led CMA to new heights, has died

Jo Walker-Meador, who rose from the Country Music Association's "girl Friday" to become a chief architect of today's country music industry, died early Wednesday morning in Nashville after suffering a stroke. She was 93 years old. 

Her daughter, Michelle Walker, confirmed her death through a spokeswoman. 

She was the first full-time employee the CMA ever hired. The fledgling trade organization brought her on as office manager in the 1950s, a time when the genre was being overshadowed by rock 'n' roll. When she retired in 1991 after 29 years as the CMA's executive director, country music was an international juggernaut.

More:Meet Jo Walker-Meador — matriarch of the CMA

Under her leadership, the genre flourished. During her tenure as executive director, she oversaw the creation of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, CMA Awards and Fan Fair, which became CMA Fest. 

"When you thought of the CMA, you thought of Jo Walker," said country legend Bill Anderson, a dear friend of Walker-Meador for nearly 60 years. "I never knew anybody in any business as devoted to her job, her cause and her people like she was."

Anderson added that Walker-Meador was "one of the sweetest people" he'd ever known, and a fierce advocate for country music and musicians: "We had to scratch and claw for everything back in those days. Jo could scratch and claw without people knowing they had been scratched and clawed. She left a mark on this town and this business that will never be erased."

Walker-Meador was born Edith Josephine Denning on Feb. 16, 1924 in Orlinda, Tenn. She was one of 11 children growing up on the family farm. Her father played piano by ear and sang in church, but aside from that, she didn't come from a particularly musical family.

“I didn’t listen to a lot of music when I was young,” she said at the Louise Scruggs Memorial Forum at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 2014. “We didn’t have a radio, and of course there was no television. I didn’t go to concerts. What I heard at church was all the music that I knew. I knew I liked some music...I knew I liked to dance to Hank Williams.”

An avid basketball player in high school, she dreamed of being a high school teacher and a women's basketball coach. After graduation, she couldn't afford to go directly to college, so she got a job and saved money for her education. 

During World War II, she worked in the salvage department at the Vultee Aircraft Plant in Nashville, where she sorted nuts, bolts and screws. After the end of her shift, still wearing her Vultee uniform, she'd go to night classes at the Watkins Institute. There, she learned shorthand, typing and other office skills. Once class ended, she'd run down Church Street to catch the last bus back to her home in Old Hickory. Later, she attended Lambuth College and George Peabody College.

In 1958, the Country Music Association was created. “They wanted me to be the assistant, you know, the ‘girl Friday,’” Walker-Meador told The Tennessean during an interview at her Green Hills apartment in May 2016 . "I was to help with filing, and answering the phone, those sort of things."

After a short time on the job, executive director Harry Stone departed and Walker-Meador functionally filled in as the CMA chief. When the board set out to choose a new executive director, another influential country music woman spoke up on Walker-Meador’s behalf.

“I wasn’t there, but I’m told that Minnie Pearl said, ‘Jo’s doing all the work. Why don’t we just hire her?’” Walker-Meador remembered.

Walker-Meador accepted the job in 1962 and held it until her retirement in 1991. In response to rock 'n' roll's domination, Walker-Meador made it a priority to increase the reach of country music on the radio. She was successful. A survey conducted around the time of the CMA’s inception in the late 50s found just 81 full-time country radio stations. When Walker-Meador retired, there were more than 2,400. 

More than 1,000 people attended her star-studded retirement banquet, which was hosted by country legend Brenda Lee. "Your retirement is country music's loss," said Garth Brooks in a videotaped message that was played during the event. 

That evening, Walker-Meador said, "The most satisfying part of it all is that I was able to know and work with all of you — you are my friends."

Joe Galante, the Sony Nashville CEO who began serving on the CMA board in 1978, recalled Walker-Meador’s skill at navigating the unwieldy board of directors. Mostly men, the board was full of larger-than-life personalities and executives with their own agendas.

But Walker-Meador would calmly keep the board on task, Galante said, and funnel their unique individual talents to the work of growing country music. 

“She had this very calm demeanor,” Galante said. “If you think about the board back then, it was mostly men. She would calmly take all these diverse interests people had – because it’s a cross section – and she kept personal agendas aside. She never lost sight of what her focus was, and what she wanted the organization to do. It was almost like a teacher at the head of a class, if you will.”

Galante said the number of Music Row executives whose young careers were shepherded by Walker-Meador is too many to count. Up until the days before her death, she continued to meet and have lunch with music industry leaders, applying her impeccable attention to detail and memory to advise them, he said.

Influential business manager Mary Ann McCready is one of the executives mentored by Walker-Meador. McCready said Walker-Meador reached out to her shortly after she graduated from Vanderbilt University and was hired by CBS Records.“I’ve treasured her guidance and example for over 40 years,” McCready said. “What a force of grace, drive and intelligence. I love Jo with all my heart and I will miss her for the rest of my life.”

Even after her retirement, Walker-Meador devoted time to the CMA. 

In 2016, Sarah Trahern, who was hired to the CMA's top post in 2013, said she regularly called Walker-Meador for advice, particularly about how to work with the board of directors, and that Walker-Meador would visit the office and talk about her career with the CMA staff. 

More:As CMA chief, Sarah Trahern leads country big wigs with steady hand

In 1994, the Country Music Association established the Jo Walker-Meador Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement by an individual or organization in supporting and advocating for country music outside of the United States, in her honor. 

Walker-Meador was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the highest honor in the country music industry, in 1995. "Jo Walker-Meador looked at a mid-sized Southern town and envisioned something grander," museum CEO Kyle Young said in a statement Wednesday morning. "She listened to music that was regional and knew that it could have worldwide impact. And then she quietly and gracefully ushered these things into being. She created grand scenes, then stood behind them. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum would not exist without her, and my life is one of millions that are better because of Jo Walker-Meador." 

She is survived by her brothers Eugene and Pete Denning, daughter Michelle Walker and step-children Rob and Karen Meador. Funeral arrangements are unavailable at this time. 

Reach Nate Rau at 615-259-8094 and nrau@tennessean.com. Follow on Twitter @tnnaterau. Reach Juli Thanki at jthanki@tennessean.com or on Twitter @julithanki. Reach Cindy Watts at ciwatts@tennessean.com.