Country's All-Time Singles Performer Dies

He was known as "The Tennessee Plowboy." His career began in the early 1940s when he was a featured singer in Pee Wee King's "Golden West Cowboys." And, to date, he is the only person in the history of country music to be named the Country Music Association's "Entertainer of the Year" after being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Eddy Arnold passed away May 8. He would have turned 90 on May 15th.

Born in Henderson, Tennessee in 1918, Richard Edward Arnold began performing at square dances at age 11 to help earn money following the death of his father. He played on radio stations, earning a following, through the 1930s.

During World War II, Arnold was one of a number of regional and national performers signed to R.J. Reynold's "Camel Caravan" to perform for troops. He met Pee Wee King on this tour and soon became the featured singer in King's very popular band. After a year, Arnold left the Golden West Cowboys when RCA's legendary artist developer, Steve Sholes, signed Arnold to a contract as a solo artist.

According to Billboard chart historian/author Joel Whitburn, Arnold's career on the Billboard singles chart is unsurpassed. He held the #1 spot with a total of five different songs for an entire year, from November 1947 to November 1948. Only Jimmy Wakely's "One Has My Name" broke Arnold's longevity string atop the charts. Whitburn still lists Arnold, who had his last charted record in 1983, as the #1 artist of all-time. Arnold had 145 songs make the Billboard charts, with 26 of them hitting #1. He was the #1 artist of the 1940s, #2 of the 1950s, and #5 of the 1960s.

While many artists are inducted into the Hall of Fame long after the heyday of their career is passed, Arnold was still on top when he became the seventh inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966. His induction was on the heels of his biggest success on the pop charts, 1965's hit "Make the World Go Away." (His biggest country hit was 1947's "I'll Hold You in My Heart ('Til I Can Hold You in My Arms)," which was #1 for 21 weeks. That longevity is the longest period of time any song has ever stayed at #1, with only one other song -- Hank Snow's "I'm Movin' On" -- remaining at the top of the charts for 21 weeks.) The following year, with top ten hits such as "Turn the World Around," "Lonely Again," and "Misty Blue," Arnold was named the first "Entertainer of the Year" by the Country Music Association at their awards show. (That award was Arnold's only CMA trophy.)

Although never affiliated with any personal scandal, Arnold nevertheless caused considerable controversy when he embraced and spearheaded the "Nashville sound," a mixture of country and pop music that replaced fiddles with orchestration. Many fans rejected the sound, but Arnold said in a 1959 interview, "For every fan I lose, I'll gain five new ones." Despite the outcry from traditional fans who were accustomed to Arnold's earlier sound featuring Little Roy Wiggins on steel guitar, the "countrypolitan" sound of Arnold and others such as Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, and the Browns brought country music to a new, wider audience, and in many ways kept country music a viable form of entertainment amid the onslaught of rock and roll.

Eddy Arnold continued to perform publicly until 1999, when he officially retired from concerts. However, he still made appearances in Nashville, attending both the groundbreaking for the new Country Music Hall of Fame building in 1997 and its grand opening in 2001 (where he entertained the crowd with a chorus of "Anytime"). He was also the guest of honor at the Charles K. Wolfe Memorial Panel discussion on the 40th anniversary of RCA's Studio B (where Arnold and many other RCA acts, including Elvis Presley, recorded) at the 2007 International Country Music Conference.

On March 11, 2008, Arnold's wife of 66 years, Sally, passed away from Alzheimer's disease. Arnold suffered an injury to his hip shortly after her death.

Arnold passed away at approximately 4:45 a.m. central time on May 8, 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee. He is survived by a son and a daughter and millions of fans.