Former Statler Brother, Jimmy Fortune, recently dropped a new album, Jimmy Fortune: Sings the Classics, on Friday (April 21).

The 14-song project features covers of classics such as the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody,” Glen Campbell’s “Southern Nights” and John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and “Annie’s Song,” among others

In an exclusive video, Jimmy gives Nash Country Daily an inside look at the inspiration behind the song—done as a request of his wife’s best friend, who found out she had cancer and later passed away. Jimmy’s version of the song was played at her funeral for the first time.

“Recently, a little over a year ago my wife’s best friend, she got cancer and her favorite song was ‘Annie’s Song.’ Her name was Mindy,” Jimmy explains in the video. “She found out that we were doing this project. She said, ‘My favorite song is ‘Annie’s Song,’ you gotta do that song on that project.’ So we recorded it for her. She just passed away recently. I was supposed to sing ‘Annie’s Song’ at her funeral. There was no way I could do it, so I used my recording from this project to play it at the funeral, because I knew I just couldn’t get through it. The song has such wonderful, wonderful words. Again, John Denver—one of my favorite writers, one of my favorite performers. We did it for Mindy though and I’m glad we did.”

NCD is sharing the exclusive video of Jimmy talking about his cover of “Annie’s Song.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eqbGcMROWk&feature=youtu.be