When Chris Hillman joined the band, they renamed themselves the Hillmen. Hillman later left to form the seminal folk-rock band the Byrds, and the true-to-country Gosdin Brothers appeared as an opening act on tour. Gosdin moved to Atlanta and opened a glass and mirror business, but he returned to music in the mids. Moody Blues drummer and co-founder Graeme Edge dies at Sylvere Lotringer, intellectual who infused U.
All Sections. About Us. Music News. Larry Crowley November 20, AM. Through the years, Gosdin had managed a good number of radio hits from records pressed by some 20 independent labels, but his cash flow was worse than nil. I didn't really know or care about the difference in labels, and I wasn't particularly interested in the music business.
You've heard it before, but all I wanted to do was play and sing. That's all. But I got myself in such a mess, I didn't think it was possible to get out of it. Man, I'm known to sign anything. This natural vulnerability would delay by years the success his long-ripened talents demanded and cause him heartaches by the dozen. It would also--in a dark, desperate, creative way--serve him well. During the years he spent shuffling between independent labels, Gosdin gained a reputation as the smoothest, rangiest baritone this side--and to some, maybe that side, too--of George Jones and Merle Haggard.
Those who wandered into the small beer houses where the graying, mustachioed, often sullen-looking Gosdin sat with his guitar--he's often been accused of having virtually no stage presence--would hear him doing just what he wanted to do: playing and singing.
It was enough for them, too. They began calling him "The Voice. Vern and Rex teamed up to sing country music as the Gosdin Brothers once again, had a Top 40 country hit in with "Hangin' On," and opened for the Byrds on occasion. Gosdin moved to Atlanta in , raising a family and running a retail shop. But he never gave up on music completely.
He performed at local clubs and began to gravitate toward Nashville, where Emmylou Harris , a friend of Gosdin 's from his California days, was laying the foundation for a neo-traditionalist style of country music.
Around Gosdin and Harris cut a demo single consisting of "Hangin' On" backed with a newly written song, "Yesterday's Gone. In , after the demise of Elektra's country division, Gosdin quickly moved through several contracts and landed with the independent Nashville label Compleat. He made the Top Ten consistently in the early '80s, really hitting his stride when he teamed with Max D. Barnes as a songwriting collaborator. The pair specialized in songs of cheating and barroom romance, often delivering an over-the-top emotionalism that got Gosdin compared to the ultimate legend of honky tonk vocals, George Jones.
In October he was hospitalised and underwent heart bypass surgery. Two years later he invested in his future, when he opened his own showplace, the Country Music Amphitheatre in Ardmore, Alabama. He suffered a heart attack in , but recovered and recorded THE VOICE, an album full of solid hard-country that straddled western swing, honky-tonk, gospel and even a little bluegrass flavouring. The boxed set on VGM Records featured songs, including 14 previously unreleased tracks recorded in the early s.
The collection also featured 11 newly recorded songs, as well as many of his classic hits. Vern Gosdin, one of the classiest and most distinctive honky-tonk balladeers of all time, passed away on April 28, He died peacefully in his sleep after suffering a serious stroke roughly three weeks earlier.
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