Bill Cody, Voice of WSM’s ‘Coffee, Country & Cody,’ Dies at 67

Bill Cody, Voice of WSM's ‘Coffee, Country & Cody,’ Dies at 67

Bill Cody, whose warm, conversational voice woke Nashville and country music fans across the country each morning via Ryman Hospitality “WSM Radio” WSM-AM for more than 30 years, died Tuesday, June 9, following several weeks of hospitalization. He was 67. The “Coffee, Country & Cody” host passed peacefully, surrounded by family, at St. Thomas West Hospital in Nashville, according to a statement from daughter Hannah Davis.

Born Trent Clutts in December 1958, he took his on-air name from a boyhood fascination with “Buffalo Bill” Cody. A preacher’s son from Lebanon, KY, who once gazed at the Music City skyline through a car window and dreamed of working at the “Air Castle of the South,” Cody turned that dream into one of the most familiar voices in Nashville broadcasting.

His passion was inherited and early. His father, who grew up in the Alabama cotton fields not far from WSM’s radio tower, filled long family car rides with stories of Opry legends Roy Acuff and Uncle Dave Macon. “It was a romance for me,” Cody once recalled, “because I wanted to go where those people were.” That love took root at WLBN 1590 AM, the small daytimer in Lebanon where his father taped Sunday sermons for playback. Watching the afternoon DJ through the studio window, a 12-year-old Cody knew radio was his calling. “They just offered me everything,” he said, “a little sponge 12-year-old kid who had nothing but a dream.”

Cody began his professional radio career at Lebanon’s WLBN-AM (1590) in 1971, and his path wound through Kentucky, Florida and Texas before he reached the station he had dreamed of as a boy. He joined WSM-AM on April 25, 1994. The first song he ever played on the station was Tracy Lawrence’s then-No. 1 hit “If the Good Die Young,” and his first in-studio guest was Charlie Daniels, a boyhood hero. The two laughed for years afterward about the chocolate raspberry truffle coffee Cody had served him that morning, a story Daniels brought up until his death.

He arrived at a pivotal moment in Nashville’s history, in 1994, the same year the Ryman Auditorium reopened, the Wildhorse Saloon opened, and the city began its transformation into a modern destination. Among his first hosting duties was the Ryman’s reopening production of “Always … Patsy Cline,” starring a then-teenage Mandy Barnett, who would go on to become an Opry member.

Over three decades, Cody became inseparable from the Grand Ole Opry, where he served for years as an announcer, including for Opry Country Classics — introducing the acts, reading sponsor spots, and trading stories sidestage with the artists he loved. He credited the late Dick Clark with giving him his guiding philosophy: “rehearsed spontaneity.” His work reached well beyond Nashville through television and syndicated radio, and he interviewed everyone from Loretta Lynn and Vince Gill to Robert Duvall, Madeleine Albright, and Queen Noor of Jordan. During WSM’s 75th-anniversary coverage from the Ryman, he interviewed President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush.

Cody’s contributions were honored with induction into the Country Radio Hall of Fame in 2008 — a distinction his adopted hometown of Cross Plains, in Robertson County, marked with a sign at the city limits and a “Bill Cody Day.” In October 2024, he received a star on Nashville’s Music City Walk of Fame, alongside honorees including the Fairfield Four and the late Jimmy Buffett. “It is hard to think of someone who is more beloved in this town than Bill,” co-host Kelly Sutton said at the ceremony. On May 28, during a live on-air announcement, he was named a 2026 inductee into the Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame. The induction ceremony is set for July 25 in Franklin, TN.

In a social-post on Tuesday, WSM-AM remembered him as “a singular presence” who built “not just a morning show” but “a gathering place rooted in his deep love for country music and the people behind it.” The station plans to honor him with a marathon of memorable moments from “Coffee, Country & Cody.”

Tributes poured in from across the industry. “Country Music has lost one of its pillars,” Dierks Bentley wrote. “Bill was just as important to the fabric of our music and city as any artist, songwriter or musician. No one loved Country Music, its history and its characters more than Bill Cody.”

Those who worked alongside him returned again and again to the same word: kind. From the biggest star to the security guard at the door, he had a gift for making each person feel like the only one in the room. “With him, the person you hear on the air is exactly the person you hear off the air,” co-host and producer Charlie Mattos once said.

Arrangements will be announced.