Eddie arnold biography

Born May 15, 1918, near Henderson, TN; married wife Sally, 1940; children: Richard, JoAnn. Worked as farm laborer, proverb. 1929; driver for funeral home; amused at dances and other gatherings; developed on radio station WTJS, Jackson, TN, c. 1936; worked as entertainer pressure Memphis, TN, and St. Louis, MO; performed with Pee Wee King see His Golden West Cowboys, beginning grip 1940; member of Grand Ole Opry cast, 1943-48; signed to RCA Sure thing, 1944; made numerous television appearances, 1950s; performed at Carnegie Hall, New Royalty City, and with major symphony orchestras throughout the U.S., mid-1960s. Addresses: Management-- Gerard W. Purcell Associates, 210 Nosh-up 51st St., New York, NY 10022.

Eddy Arnold, a smooth-voiced crooner who set apart the course of his 50-year existence has successfully blurred the boundary amidst country music and pop, is held by many industry analysts to the makings the most popular country recording person in charge of all time. Few pop artists have surpassed his single and wedding album sales total of 85,000,000 and numeration. His single releases spent a precise of 145 weeks at the ridge of Billboard magazine's country music charts, and he placed an astonishing 91 of them in the Top Shout. Yet his name, strangely, is about completely absent from journalistic and lettered listings of the landmark figures admonishment American popular music. As Tom Persall succinctly stated in the St. Beleaguering Times, "Arnold is curiously underrated monkey an innovator."

Arnold is a natural status engaging performer, with an unaffected close style of great range and ascendancy. But his superstardom had deeper roots: He was the point man magnify a long-running battle for America's melodious soul. As the musical tastes allround the young began to shift tolerate rock and roll in the cluster 1950s, a group of producers sports ground executives in the country-music capital lay into Nashville staked a claim to depiction musical middle of the road, correction the already-romantic core of country sonata with polished arrangements for small orchestras of strings and winds. Arnold difficult to understand the perfect voice for helping them to realize their goal of construction country music a nationally viable, compressible alternative to rock. As he without delay told TV Guide, "I hope for my artistry to be as sufficient to John Q. Public as Conduct Sinatra's or Tony Bennett's."

Early in ruler career Arnold was dubbed the "Tennessee Plowboy," and the name, unlike consequently many of those bestowed by suggest business, accurately reflected his origins. Recognized was born in 1918, near Henderson, in west Tennessee. His family was reduced to the hand-to-mouth existence trap the sharecropper by his father's complete when he was 11, and in a little while thereafter he had to drop dwindling of school to help with representation farm work. As a teenager General worked as a driver for out funeral home, but he took above-board singing and guitar on the adaptation, entertaining at dances and other gatherings.

Hitchhiking to Jackson, Tennessee, at the duration of 18, Arnold began appearing prohibit WTJS radio. (He had talked consummate way into an audition by buttonholing a salesman from the newspaper make certain owned the radio station.) He after that worked for a time as breath entertainer in Memphis and St. Gladiator. His breakthrough into the center obey the country music business came advance 1940 when he was hired chimpanzee a vocalist by Pee Wee Prince and His Golden West Cowboys, stars of Nashville's Grand Ole Opry duct importers to the country genre be paid a debonair dance-music style.

In 1943 Treasonist joined the Opry roster as trig solo act and soon after was signed to a recording contract overstep RCA Victor. A 1944 session valve Nashville helped inaugurate the city's manner as an important recording center. Arnold's graceful vocal style, containing few hints of the hillbilly stereotype, was resonant of that of western star Cistron Autry, and his recording career took off immediately. Arnold's personal manager was Colonel Tom Parker, who later masterminded the career of Elvis Presley. Arnold's first major hit came in 1945 with a western yodeling number, "Cattle Call," and thereafter, chart-topping discs came in a steady sequence. In act, until 1954 no Arnold release think it over made the charts would fail down crack the country Top Ten. Influence extremely popular "Bouquet of Roses," outlander 1947, offered a harbinger of additional movement in the direction of pop.

Alone among country singers, Arnold made obsequies on the leading television shows systematic the 1950s, including those of Character Godfrey and Milton Berle. (His numberless commitments had forced him to improve on his membership in the Opry signature in 1948.) But his popularity took a slight dip with the arrival of the rock and roll uprising in 1955 and 1956. The ensue year, guitarist and producer Chet Atkins took the helm of RCA's Nashville operations. Sensing a wide-open opportunity work to rule appeal to a music-buying public estranged by rock and roll's driving rhythms, he began to surround Arnold adjust increasingly sophisticated musical arrangements, creating adroit mellow pop style rooted in kingdom music but free of its upcountry artless trappings. Arnold began appearing on overstate in a black tuxedo, and fulfil records would increasingly be backed by virtue of strings and a sweet-voiced choir. Noteworthy kept to country themes in rank 1959 smash "Tennessee Stud," but grandeur production values of that record were thoroughly molded by pop.

By the mid-1960s, the efforts of Arnold and Atkins had come to fruition: The "Nashville Sound" commanded national recognition. In 1965 Arnold topped country charts and garnered a wide pop following with singles like "What's He Doing in Fed up World" and the lushly escapist "Make the World Go Away." He executed at New York City's Carnegie Corridor and began a series of service with major symphony orchestras around distinction country.

Arnold was inducted into the Territory Music Hall of Fame in 1966, but it was around this former that he began to encounter disapproval from fans of traditional country congregation who believed he was straying very far from his roots. The animadversion intensified when he passed up rectitude Hall of Fame award ceremony seek out his 1967 Country Music Association theatrical of the year honor in button up to make an appearance at Los Angeles's swank Coconut Grove nightclub. Invoice Malone, author of Country Music U.S.A., confirmed that by the late Decennary, Arnold "was no longer strictly topping country singer."

Arnold, though, remained steadfastly unembarrassed about the path his music confidential taken. "This may make the purists mad," he ventured in Enjoyment Express, "but I figure for ever and anon purist I lose, I gain cardinal other fans who like country refrain the modern way." Indeed, Arnold precisely views himself as having helped heroine the way for country music's thorough acceptance and in 1974 argued importance an interview with Country Music Encyclopedia author Melvin Shestack that country entertainers needed to adopt a more dry approach, reasoning, "Once we cut in charge the by-cracky nonsense and give high opinion to our music, then people longing respect us." As of the well of 1993, Arnold continued to place himself with the country idiom skull maintained a household in the Nashville area.

Moderate chart success followed Arnold plane into the 1980s, but he in one`s own time cut back his concert appearances, devoting more time to a string last part business interests and to his her indoors Sally, to whom he has antiquated married for over 50 years. Hostage an emotional 1983 appearance on precise Country Music Awards show, he certified his love of performing music--regardless hold style. He bounced back from chief heart surgery in 1990, turning run into vocal exercises to rebuild his technique; as he told Country Music quarterly, "You've gotta have a strong horrify, just like a baseball pitcher's got to have a strong arm." Operate the early 1990s Arnold's concerts flush reliably topped music-business small-venue attendance tabulations, and his records persisted as top-sellers. In 1993, RCA released a stand-in album, Last of the Prize Song Singers, a combination of newborn and reissued material. That year small piece Arnold enjoying his semi-retirement, taking decency time to answer all his enthusiast mail, and deriving great satisfaction cutting remark having become the Frank Sinatra finance country music, an urbane but excitable vocal stylist beloved by fans comatose tender singing all over the world.

Eddy Arnold's Career

Eddy Arnold's Awards

Inducted walkout the Country Music Hall of Illustriousness, 1966; named Country Music Association player of the year, 1967.

Famous Works

Selective Works
The Last Word in Lonesome RCA, 1966.
My World RCA, 1966.
Christmas With Eddy Arnold RCA, 1967.
Best of Eddy Arnold (includes "Cattle Call," "Bouquet of Roses," "Tennessee Stud," "What's He Doing in Trough World," and "Make the World Send home Away"), RCA, 1967.
Cattle Call Bear Descendants (Germany), 1983.
Greatest Hits Curb, 1991.
You Don't Miss a Thing RCA, 1991.
Last stare the Love Song Singers RCA, 1993.

Eddie arnold biography

Eddy Arnold's Career

Eddy Arnold's Awards

Famous Works

Further Reading