Songwriter, musician and friend of the stars Larry Lee Favorite, a popular
figure on Music Row, died yesterday morning of heart failure at his home on
Bluegrass Circle in Lebanon.

Funeral arrangements for Mr. Favorite, 62, were incomplete last night.
BondMemorial Chapel in Mt. Juliet is in charge of services.

Mr. Favorite, who under the name Larry Lee wrote or co-wrote hundreds of songs,
including the country standard Fourteen Carat Mind, worked with Johnny Cash as
head of the Cash Publishing Companies. He was a native of Grand Rapids, Mich.
He had lived in Nashville since his late teens.

More recently, he was head of the Nashville Songpluggers Association, a group
that reached out to help unpublished songwriters get their works heard.

Mr. Favorite's career in country music spanned the past 40 years and included
stints with the Mel Tillis organization, Screen Gems and Cedarwood Publishing.

''Country music was his main thing,'' Mr. Favorite's son, William Bailey
Favorite of Lebanon, said. ''That's what he lived for. He wore cowboy boots
and country and western clothes.''

Among the artists who recorded his songs were the Statler Brothers, Roy Acuff,
Wanda Jackson, Connie Smith, Johnny Paycheck and George Jones.

Other survivors include his wife, Brenda Favorite; another son, Darren
Favorite, of Nashville, and six grandchildren.