Terrell Tye

Forerunner Music

Terrell Reed Tye was bom at Fort Benning, Georgia. Her father was a career Army officer and Terrell lived at military installations around the world. After graduating from the Sayre School in Lexington, Terrell made her way to Briarcliff College in New York. Arriving in Nashville she was befriended by Bob Webster who introduced her to her future husband, Curt Allen, and to Cowboy Jack Clement. Cowboy hired her in 1976 and she began leaming the in's and out's of copyright administration. In 1987, Jim Rooney came to Terrell with the idea of starting a music publishing company. They brought producer Allen Reynolds and engineer Mark Miller into the venture, and FORERUNNER MUSIC was born. Their very first writer was Pat Alger who went on to be inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame. Over the course of 13 years, with Terrell at the helm, Forerunner amassed a catalog of over 1500 songs that included hits like "How Long Gone" by Brooks & Dunn, "Small Town Saturday Night" by Hal Ketchum, "The Thunder Rolls", "Unanswered Prayers", "Two Pina Coladas" and "That Summer" by Garth Brooks, "Like We Never Had A Broken Heart" by Trisha Yearwood,
"Goin' Gone" by Kathy Mattea and "Don't Let Our Love Start Slippin' Away" by Vince Gill. The Forerunners decided to sell the catalog in 2000. Terrell followed her passion for fishing and moved to Soldotna, Alaska. She continued administering various publishing catalogs and eventually came back to Nashville to be with her sons Josh and Zack. She passed away on Christmas Day 2010.