Kelly Clarkson was staggered when a sexist music executive let her know he wasn't a fan of women writing songs. The singer, who recently won an ASCAP award for penning the Song of The Year "Because of You," reveals some executives still refuse to take her seriously as a songwriter.

And one recent conference call made her realize just how hard it is to break through and become respected.

She tells Entertainment Weekly magazine, "Everybody doesn't like me writing all the time, no matter how many number ones you write. It's clearly like yelling at a brick wall. It's because I'm a woman... a young woman. I literally heard somebody say it. They didn't know I was on the phone... I hung up. I was like, 'I can't even address that... That was the most ignorant thing I've ever heard."

Wilkin died Saturday, said S. Reese, director of Woodlawn Roesch-Patton Funeral Home. Wilkin had learned last year that her 2003 triple-bypass heart operation had failed and that she was not a candidate for another procedure. "It's OK," she said. "I have my faith. I am ready to go. Don't be sad for me."

Wilkin was a founder of the Nashville Songwriters Association, a non-profit group that advocates for songwriters, and was dubbed "the den mother of Music Row." She was inducted into Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1975. She is credited with discovering Kris Kristofferson, who released a statement Sunday calling her a "tough, intelligent and funny woman making it in a man's world."

Born Marijohn Melson in Texas, she was the grandchild of a country fiddler and learned to play piano as a child. After graduating from college, she became a schoolteacher in Tulsa, and started writing songs for her choir. She moved to Nashville in 1958 and was signed as a songwriter by Cedarwood Publishing company. She scored her first major hit when she and John D. Loudermilk created Waterloo in 1959. Stonewall Jackson's recording topped the country and pop charts.

On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported on the death of a 68-year-old man named Paul Van Valkenburgh of Ormond Beach, Fla., who claimed to have written the song under the name Paul Vance. The story cited the man's wife as the source for that claim. But the music industry's real Paul Vance, a 76-year-old man from Coral Springs, Fla., is alive and well, and says the other Paul Vance appears to have made the whole thing up.

The Paul Vance who wrote the songs — and provided proof with royalty payments he is still receiving for the hit — said he has been inundated with calls from people who think he died. An owner of racehorses, Vance said two of his horses were scratched from races Wednesday because people thought he had died. "Do you know what it's like to have grandchildren calling you and say, 'Grandpa, you're still alive?'" he said in a telephone interview from Coral Springs. "This is not a game. I am who I am and I'm proud of who I am. But these phones don't stop with people calling thinking I'm dead."

Rose Leroux, the widow of the man who died, said she was surprised by the disclosure, and "kind of devastated." She said she had no reason to doubt that her husband — who apparently had some sort of music career when he was younger — was the writer of the famous tune. She said her husband told her that he never got any royalties because he sold the rights when he was young, around 19. She said that by the time they met almost 40 years ago, he was making his living as a salesman. He later became a painting contractor. "If this other man says he did it then my husband's a liar, or he's a liar," Leroux said.

The living Paul Vance estimated he has made several million dollars from the song, which was recorded by 16-year-old teen idol Brian Hyland, surged to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in August 1960 and has been pop culture staple ever since. The song — about a bashful young woman in a skimpy bathing suit — has been used in such movies as "Sister Act 2" and "Revenge of the Nerds II" and was more recently revived in a yogurt commercial. "It's a money machine," Vance said. Vance said his first hit was "Catch a Falling Star," recorded by Perry Como, and he went on to write numerous million-sellers for Como, Johnny Mathis and others.