Dave Loggins, the singer-songwriter who wrote the 1974 hit “Please Come to Boston” and the theme song for the Masters golf tournament, has died. He was 76.
According to an obituary published in the Tennessean newspaper, Loggins died Wednesday at Alive Hospice in Nashville. The cause of death was not reported.
Loggins, a Tennessee native, was a second cousin of rocker Kenny Loggins. But his songwriting career took him in a more traditional country direction, penning songs for Johnny Cash, Wynonna Judd, Alabama, Reba McEntire, Tanya Tucker, Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson. He also wrote for soul artists such as Smokey Robinson and Ray Charles.
Two of its songs, Rogers' “Morning Desire” and Juice Newton's “You Make Me Want to Make You Mine,” topped the Billboard country charts.
“Please Come to Boston,” Loggins’ best-known single under the same name, was a poignant song about a couple living far away and unable to overcome the distance between them. The song peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped what is now the Adult Contemporary chart.
In the 1980s, Loggins dueted with Anne Murray on “Nobody Loves Me Like You Do,” a song made popular on the CBS soap opera “As the World Turns.” The single topped Billboard’s country music chart, and the two shared a CMA Award for vocal duo of the year in 1985. (Whitney Houston later recorded a version of “Nobody,” too.) Loggins earned four Grammy nominations in her career.
However, his most well-known song among sports fans is probably “Augusta,” the theme song for the Augusta Masters Golf Tournament, which has been the soundtrack to the event since 1982.
Loggins wrote the song after playing golf there in 1981, telling the AP in 2019: “I stopped for a minute, looked at the pines, and the wind there was different in some ways. Spiritually it was different. That course was just a work of art. I looked at some dogwoods and, man, I started writing the song in my head, which is what I do when I get inspired. I had the first verse before I even got off the course.”
According to his obituary, Loggins is survived by his three sons, Quinn, Kyle and Dylan Loggins, and a grandson, Braxton Loggins.
