[Vision2020] Eddy Arnold, Who Transformed Country Music, Dies at 89

[lfalen]

Eddy Arnold was great.
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: Tom Hansen thansen at moscow.com
Date: Fri, 09 May 2008 06:13:38 -0700
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Eddy Arnold, Who Transformed Country Music, Dies at 89

> Songs by Eddy Arnold:
> 
> "Make the World Go Away"
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZf6m_ROIKo
> 
> "What's He Doing in My World"
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTQDhgECSXU
> 
> "Tennessee Stud"
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VcnVtvDtG8
> 
> "I'll Hold You in My Heart"
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_p-_FLE0VY
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> >From today's (May 9, 2008) Spokesman Review -
> 
> --------
> 
> Eddy Arnold, who transformed country music, dies at 89 
> 
> Eddy Arnold, the most successful country hit maker of all time, who played 
> a crucial role in transforming what had long been considered "hillbilly 
> music" from a rural phenomenon into music with national appeal, died 
> Thursday at 89, a week short of his 90th birthday.
> 
> Arnold, an elegant, pop-influenced singer, died at a long-term care 
> facility near Nashville, Tenn., family spokesman and Arnold biographer Don 
> Cusic said Thursday. His wife of 66 years, Sally, had died in March and 
> Arnold had broken his hip the same month in a fall at his home.
> 
> Determined to transcend the rural poverty he had known as a child in 
> Tennessee, he carved out an identity as an urbane crooner unrestricted by 
> the trappings associated with country music stardom. He has been 
> called "the Garth Brooks of his time" for creating the template still 
> followed for country singers who reach beyond a niche audience to capture 
> a broad following, a move that angered many traditional country fans.
> 
> "He epitomized how someone could become a huge star in this genre," Kyle 
> Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, 
> said Thursday. "He certainly set the bar: He sold 80 million records, had 
> his own TV show, filled in for Johnny Carson as a 'Tonight Show' host. In 
> some ways his career defines what it's like to end up at the top of the 
> heap."
> 
> Arnold had a run of 57 consecutive top 10 hits from 1945 to 1954, among 
> them "I'll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)," which 
> spent more than five months at No. 1 in 1947, and "Bouquet of Roses," 
> which logged 19 weeks in the top spot the following year. Many of those 
> songs, despite the twangy steel guitars and fiddles under his voice, 
> appealed to large numbers of fans because of his mellow tenor, which was 
> virtually free of a drawl.
> 
> "More than anyone in the 1940s, he helped change the image of the music 
> from 'hillbilly' to 'country,' " Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times' 
> former pop music critic, said Thursday. "He ranks with Johnny Cash as one 
> of the great ambassadors of country music."
> 
> Arnold's music had a huge effect on succeeding generations of country 
> performers.
> 
> "When I was about 15 years old, the only stuff I sang was Eddy Arnold," 
> George Jones said in a statement Thursday. "He would be just about my 
> whole show. I'd sing 'Bouquet of Roses' and 'I'm Throwing Rice (at the 
> Girl I Love).' All I sang was Eddy until I heard Hank Williams."
> 
> Arnold acted as a mentor for younger singers.
> 
> "He's given me a lot of advice," Josh Turner wrote in the liner notes for 
> his 2006 album "Your Man," which reached No. 2 on Billboard's overall 
> album chart, "but the one thing that stuck out in my mind when it came to 
> making this record was when he told me, 'You go and record some love 
> songs, because that's what people relate to.' He said, 'The relationship 
> between a woman and a man relates to people better than anything else.' "
> 
> Although Arnold's popularity dipped for a time in the late 1950s in the 
> wake of rock 'n' roll's arrival, it rebounded in the 1960s, after a 
> crucial change in the people guiding him musically and professionally. 
> That led to another run of hits that crystallized what became known 
> as "the Nashville sound," typified by swelling orchestral backgrounds and 
> female choir voices behind songs such as "Make the World Go Away" and "I 
> Want to Go With You," both No. 1 country hits.
> 
> Arnold's career spanned seven decades, from the 1930s, when he hosted a 
> radio show for five years in Memphis, until 1999, when he last appeared on 
> the country singles chart with a duet with then-teenage singer LeAnn Rimes 
> in a new version of his 1955 yodel-laden western hit "Cattle Call."
> 
> In the latest edition of Joel Whitburn's "Top Country Songs" volume 
> collating Billboard's charts from 1944 to 2005, Arnold is ranked as the 
> No. 1 country artist of all time, logging 146 records in the Top 100 of 
> Billboard's country singles chart, 28 of those making it to No. 1.
> 
> Richard Edward Arnold, born May 15, 1918, in Henderson, Tenn., grew up 
> working on his parents' farm, only to see it repossessed during the 
> Depression, after which the family became sharecroppers on what had been 
> their own land.
> 
> His father died when Eddy was 11, so the boy started singing at church 
> picnics and other events.
> 
> "His childhood made such an impression on him," Young said. "I would say 
> he was driven, probably until his last breath, because he was still 
> worried that some day he might wake up penniless."
> 
> Where other country stars flashed their success with bejeweled cowboy 
> outfits, silver-dollar-covered luxury cars and guitar-shaped swimming 
> pools, Arnold remained the low-key country gentleman, quietly parlaying 
> the money from his hit records into lucrative real estate investments in 
> and around Nashville.
> 
> Critic Hilburn said: "He was a humble guy who didn't seem to care all that 
> much about the razzle-dazzle surrounding the music business. He was just 
> into going onstage (or into the studio) and singing his songs and then 
> enjoying his hobbies and private life."
> 
> ---------------------------------------------
> 
> Bless you, Eddy, now on tour with the angels
> 
> Seeya round town, Moscow.
> 
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
> 
> 
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