Yesterday’s post on Millie Kirkham, the superb Nashville back-up singer on so many Elvis songs among others, prompted a couple of readers to ask whether she was the inspiration for the character of Lotty Pilgrim in Heart of Barkness (a Chet and Bernie novel in a series that can be read in any order).

Good question! First, I never base a character on a real person. Second, Lotty is more of a road musician than a studio one, more of a troubadour, and a female troubadour is exactly the kind of thing I like to write about! Third – but I’m not completely cut off from real life, and lurking in the background, a least tonally, must have been Crazy Heart, the excellent 2009 movie.

(Please ignore previous post on this subject. Some sort of glitch.)