Episode #172: Matt Axton (Hoyt Axton)

Today on the Rarified Heir Podcast we are talking to Matt Axton, son of singer, songwriter, commercial pitchman and actor Hoyt Axton. If you’re first thought is that Hoyt Axton was the dad in the film Gremlins, you’d be correct but you’d only be scratching the surface of this well rounded entertainer. We learn from Matt how his father wrote the smash hit “Joy To The World” made popular by Three Dog Night, how he became the house performer in the 1960s at the world famous Doug Weston’s The Troubadour for close to a decade and how bands like Steppenwolf & The Kingston Trio recorded his songs before the general public ever really heard of the name Hoyt Axton.

Matt also tells us about his grandmother Mae Boren Axton aka the “Queen Mother of Nashville” who was one of only two (yes you heard that right) in the music business in Nashville in the 1950s. She also penned more than 200 songs, got her undergraduate degree in journalism when most women simply did not go to college and she happened to be the person who introduced Colonel Tom Parker to Elvis Presley. Yes, you heard us correctly. But that’s not even half of it. She wrote Elvis’ first #1 hit song. Can you guess what that song was? Because you definitely have heard it. And that’s still not even the whole story.

It was great to talk to Matt, the third in his family to go into the entertainment business, as he also is a singer/songwriter and performer who talks to us about his own career on stage, the difference between how he, his father and grandmother toured and made records and how he’s bringing his own “Joy To The World” by practicing what his dad preached. That was:  “Be a conduit for good music and hopefully you can also be the satellite dish that pulls in the songs as they come in.” This is the Rarified Heir Podcast. Everyone has a story.