Dennis Linde (pronounced LIN-dee, March 18, 1943December 22, 2006) was an American music songwriter based in Nashville who has had over 250 of his songs recorded. He is best known for writing the 1972 Elvis Presley hit, "Burning Love". Rarely working with co-writers, he wrote both words and music for most of his songs. In 1994, Linde won BMI's "Top Writer Award" and received four awards as BMI's most-performed titles for that year. His wife and daughter collected the awards because Linde shunned awards shows and avoided publicity. He earned 14 BMI "Million-Air" songs (a song played on the air one million times). In 2001, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Linde died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2006 at the age of 63. Linde wrote the top-5 U.S. country hits "Long Long Texas Road" (Roy Drusky, 1970), "The Love She Found in Me" (Gary Morris, 1983), "Walkin' a Broken Heart" (Don Williams, 1985), "Then It's Love" (Don Williams, 1986), "I'm Gonna Get You" (Eddy Raven, 1988), "In a Letter to You" (Eddy Raven, 1989), "Bubba Shot the Jukebox" (Mark Chesnutt, 1992), "It Sure Is Monday" (Mark Chesnutt, 1993), "Callin' Baton Rouge" (Garth Brooks, 1993), and "John Deere Green" (Joe Diffie, 1993). He also wrote "Goodbye Earl", a gold single for the Chicks in 2000. Early life Linde was born in Abilene, Texas, but lived in St. Louis from age 13 to age 26 (1956 to 1969). His stepfather was a sales executive with Colgate-Palmolive company. The family moved from Abilene to San Angelo, then Miami and finally St. Louis. His family was not especially musical, but they all loved to sing. "I didn't even start in music until I was 15, but I had a feeling I could play guitar", Linde told The New York Times in 2005. His grandmother had given him a guitar at that age and he taught himself to play. He joined a St. Louis group called the "Starlighters" playing R&B and rock. He graduated from St. Louis' Normandy High School about 1960. He did not attend college and knew he was a prime candidate for the military draft. He enlisted in the Missouri Air National Guard. Linde drove a Corvette and at age 24 he had so many speeding tickets that his driver's license was revoked. At this time he had a job driving a