Todd David Cerney was an American songwriter and musician. He composed "Good Morning Beautiful", a 2002 five-week country number one hit for Steve Holy ; "The Blues Is My Business", part of Etta James' 2003 Grammy Award winning album "Let's Roll"; and "I'll Still Be Loving You", a 1987 country number one hit for Restless Heart. He and his co-writers were nominated for a Grammy Award for "I'll Still Be Loving You". The song won the 1988 award for "ASCAP Country Song of the Year". Cerney was born in Detroit, Michigan, and graduated from Zanesville High School in Zanesville, Ohio in 1971. He began his song-writing career after moving to Nashville, where he initially worked at as an audio engineer. Some of the earliest artists to record his songs include Steve Carlisle and Levon Helm.
Music career
Cerney became known as the "Rock Doctor" after co-writing songs with members of various bands including Cheap Trick, Eddie Money, Loverboy and Bad English. Popular artists to record his compositions include Aretha Franklin"If Ever A Love There Was", John Anderson's "Till I Get Used to the Pain" and Ty Herndon's "No Mercy", which peaked at #26 on the Billboard Country Music charts. In 1988 Cerney traveled to Russia as one of 28 songwriters who participated in the Music Speaks Louder Than Words project – a collaboration between American and Soviet songwriters which included Michael Bolton and Cyndi Lauper. During his two weeks in Russia he cowrote the songs "Speak to My Heart" and "Don't Stop Now". In October 2009, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton reunited for the first time in 25 years to sing "Tell Me That You Love Me," a duet that Cerney co-wrote. The song was featured in Rogers' three-CD box set "Kenny Rogers: The First 50 Years" on Time-Life Records. In 2010, American Idol runner-up Bo Bice included a song he co-wrote with Cerney, "Keep on Rollin'," on his "3" album. Cerney played guitar, mandolin, harmonica, keyboards and sang lead and backing vocals with various artists including backing vocals for Kenny Rogers and Levon Helm, mandolin for the Dixie Chicks and the and a full range of instruments for various songwriter groups including . He also worked with three former members of the soft-rock band Bread – Jimmy Griffin, Robb Royer and Larry Knechtel – forming "Toast" during the mid-1990s, recording a number of songs for an album release that remained unfinished.
