Country singer Ferlin Husky dies at 85 (Reuters)

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters)-great music Country Ferlin Husky, a pioneer in hard twang Bakersfield is lushly produced Nashville sounds that he scored his biggest hit with the ballad "Gone", died Thursday, aged 85 years.

"Gone", which spent ten weeks atop the country charts in 1957 and reached the No. 4 as a pop hit, was easily the most requested song of his career half-century-plus of Husky as a performer.

The Flat River, Missouri native, died at the home of his daughter of Westmoreland, Tennessee, about an hour north of Nashville. He had a history of heart problems and more recently had been hospitalized for congestive heart failure.

It was a long decline and Husky surprised many when he attended the ceremony for his induction of Country Music Hall of Fame last May.

He connected with a tank of oxygen-him jokingly to it as his "own airline" at the ceremony-and was helped to his feet, his old friend Charley Pride could hang his Hall of Fame Medallion around his neck.

"I want to thank everyone who had anything to do with me in this group, the people that I've admired since I was a child," he said during the ceremony.

But at the moment, the country singer underestimate that he would never make the Hall because voters might have forgotten it.

"Some of the people who vote are so young ..." I thought I would have thought that Ferlin Husky was a sort of a disease, he said country music writer Peter Cooper, the Tennessean.

A TRUE SHOWMAN

At the height of his career, in the ' 50s and ' 60s, Husky was considered unsurpassed as a showman of country music.

"There were a lot of years when nobody in business could follow Ferlin Husky," fellow star Merle Haggard once told him. "It was a great live act of the day. A great entertainer. "

Other successes as well as "Gone" included his version of the Gospel song "wings of a dove," which spent ten weeks atop the country charts in 1960. His last no. 1, "Ali", spent nine months in the country and also was a pop hit.

Husky was known to be at the forefront of the Nashville sound, which a smooth, richly textured form of country music developed by producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins in an attempt to expand the appeal of vocal music.

1957 version of Husky's "Gone" was one of the recordings "considered the birth of the Nashville sound," said Eddie Stubbs, historic country radio program host Grand Ole Opry.

An earlier version of "Gone" was cut from Husky in 1952 in California, where he settled for a time after World War II and recorded under the name Terry Preston, becoming a pioneering force in the Bakersfield sound with rough edges.

"The birth of guitar twang, brilliant, treble sound that so many people associate with the sound of Bakersfield and with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard can be traced to Ferlin Husky," said Stubbs, noting that Husky guitar played on "You Gotta have a license Tommy Collins '" in the 1950s.

In addition to his successes as Preston and Husky, the musician has also performed under the comic alter ego, Simon Crum, who had his contract hits.

(Editing by Steve Gorman and Bob Tourtellotte)

View the original article here