Grammy Award-winning country music songwriter Brett James was flying on his private jet with his new wife and her 28-year-old daughter, who had just celebrated her birthday, when the plane crashed and killed them, officials said Friday.
James, 57 — who wrote songs for Taylor Swift, Dierks Bentley and other stars — was with wife Melody Wilson, 59, and her daughter, Meryl Maxwell Wilson, on the hitmaker’s Cirrus SR22T when it crashed in an open field in Franklin, North Carolina, Thursday afternoon, according to the Daily Mail.
Wilson, who had lived with James in Nashville since at least 2020, had wished her daughter a happy 28th birthday just one day before the plane went down.
“Happy Birthday my Love!! How Blessed am I to be your Momma!” she wrote on social media Wednesday.
“You’re the MOST BEAUTIFUL AMAZING HUMAN inside and out! I’m humbled and grateful everyday for your shining presence in my life!” she added. “No words can express what a gift you are to me and everyone that KNOWS YOU.”
On New Year’s Day 2022, she had posted pictures of her and James getting married. “What an awesome year! August 21st Brett and I got married. Lucky me,” she wrote.
James, who released five singles that reached Billboard’s country chart over an eight-year period — including the Carrie Underwood hit “Jesus Take The Wheel — is survived by his four grown children.
He was previously married to Sandra Cornelius-Little, with whom he shared the four.
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