Will Jennings (Courtesy)

Tyler Junior College is paying tribute to the musical legacy of Will Jennings, an alumnus and composer of some of the biggest hit songs ever. 

Jennings has won Academy and Grammy awards and is best known for writing the hauntingly beautiful lyrics of “My Heart Will Go On,” a song in the movie “Titanic” and recorded by Celine Dion. 

The tribute, also named “My Heart Will Go On,” is set for 7 p.m. April 5. It will be held on the third floor of the  Rogers Nursing and Health Science Center and include dinner and dancing.  

Tickets cost $150 and are available from the college. The college also is seeking additional underwriting. The contact person for tickets or underwriting si Bailey Crawford at 903-510-3048 or bailey.crawford@tjc.edu. 

The event is being held to raise funds for the Rogers Palmer Performing Arts Center, a $3 million project that will transform the college’s Wise Auditorium into a more expansive arts center. 

Work on the center is scheduled to being this summer. The Rogers Palmer Performing Arts Center will have more than 14,000 square feet of new space including a recital hall and art gallery, green room, rehearsal and dance studios, a larger stage and backstage with expanded dressing rooms a new lobby.

East Texas Roots

After graduating from Chapel Hill High School in 1961, Jennings attended TJC on a music scholarship. He played trombone in the TJC Band, was active in theater productions, studied journalism, wrote poetry and met his future wife, Carol, according to a biography of Jennings provided by TJC.

In a 2006 story on the website songfacts.com, Jennings spoke of his upbringing in East Texas.

“I grew up in rural east Texas and my father’s father, my paternal grandfather, was a Methodist preacher. And all my aunts and uncles sang. So I grew up on all the old-time hymns,” Jennings said. “Plus, I grew up within hearing of a black Baptist church just a mile or two away from where we lived. And I heard them on Sunday mornings and Sunday evenings. So those are the first songs I can remember hearing, and I’m sure that had a lot to do with sort of forming part of what I do.”

Joyce Hudnall, Jennings’ sister, lives in Tyler.

She said in a 2016 story released by Tyler Junior College Communications that while growing up her brother “always had a book in his hands. Every week, my mother would take him to the Tyler Public Library, and he would check out a stack of books, read them cover-to-cover, then go back the next week and get another stack. … He’s always had a curiosity about everything, always had a head full of ideas.”

After graduating from TJC in 1963, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches. He taught English at TJC from 1967 to ’68.

He later moved to Nashville to concentrate on songwriting. Among those he has worked with are Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Rodney Crowell, Jimmy Buffett and Barry Manilow.

Career

He won his first of two Academy Awards in 1983 for “Up Where We Belong,” a love song he wrote in collaboration with Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Saint-Marie that was used in the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman.” It was a hit duet for Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.

He also received an Oscar in 1997 for “My Heart Will Go On.”  

His work with singer/songwriter Steve Winwood produced several hits including “While You See a Chance,” “Higher Love,” “The Finer Things” and “Back in the High Life Again.”

He wrote the lyrics for Barry Manilow’s soaring ballads “Somewhere in the Night” and “Looks Like We Made” and the melancholy “I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” recorded by Dionne Warwick.  His collaborations with fellow Texan Rodney Crowell produced Crowell’s hits “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway” and “What Kind of Love” and the Tim McGraw hit “Please Remember Me.”

Jennings worked with blues legend B.B. King on three of King’s albums. 

Hit Music 

Hits co-written by Jennings and the artists who recorded them include:

• Steve Winwood: “While You See a Chance,” “Higher Love” (nominated for a Grammy), “Back in the High Life Again,” “The Finer Things,” “Valerie” and “Roll With It.”
• Eric Clapton: “Tears in Heaven” (won a Grammy, nominated for Golden Globe)
• Dionne Warwick: “I’ll Never Love this Way Again,” “No Night So Long”
• Barry Manilow: “Somewhere in the Night” and “Looks Like We Made It”
• Whitney Houston: “Didn’t We Almost Have it All”
• Rodney Crowell: “Many a Long and Lonesome Highway” and “What Kind of Love”
• Jimmy Buffett: “Who’s the Blonde Stranger” and “If the Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me”
• Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes: “Up Where We Belong” (Academy Award winner)
• Celine Dion: “My Heart Will Go On” (Academy Award winner, Grammy Award winner)
• Tim McGraw: “Please Remember Me”
• Diana Ross: “If We Hold on Together”