National Academy of Songwriters Stevie Wonder, Los Lobos, Willie Dixon, Atlantic Starr, Stephen Stills, Michael Bolton, Melissa Manchester, Stephen Bishop, Brian Wilson, Kim Carnes, Michael McDonald, and many others. Also performing over the years at the "Salute To The American Songwriter" concerts were songwriting legends such as Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Barry Mann, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, Richard Sherman, John Bettis, Diane Warren, and many others. In 1988, the National 'Academy' of Songwriters teamed with VH-1 for the "Fourth Annual Salute To The American Songwriter" which was televised on VH-1 and Showtime in 1989. In 1996, the Los Angeles Songwriters Showcase (LASS)
Son of a Preacher Man in mono. "Son of a Preacher Man" was to be the last Top Ten chart hit for Springfield for almost 20 years, till she teamed up with Pet Shop Boys for the single "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" in 1987. In 1967, while working at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, songwriters John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins, who had recently had a hit with "Love of the Common People", were asked by Jerry Wexler to write a song for Aretha Franklin. Remembering the fact that Franklin's father was a preacher, as Wilkins's grandfather had been, Hurley and Wilkins quickly came up