Vern Gosdin Dies at 74
Posted Apr 29th 2009 12:00PM by Stephen L. Betts
Filed under: Legends, R.I.P.

Vern Gosdin, whose country hits included the chart-topping 'Set 'em Up Joe,' 'I Can Tell By the Way You Dance (You're Gonna Love Me Tonight)' and 'I'm Still Crazy,' died at a Nashville hospital early Wednesday morning. He was 74.

According to Nashville's Tennessean newspaper, Gosdin's administrative assistant Dawn Hall said the singer suffered "a pretty bad stroke" about three weeks ago. He died peacefully in his sleep.

Born in Woodland, Ala., on August 5, 1934, Gosdin was one of country music's most hardcore traditional singers, although his musical career encompassed a variety of genres. A one-time bandmate of The Byrds' Chris Hillman, he also performed with his brother Rex in the California-based band The Golden State Boys, and later as The Gosdin Brothers.

Gosdin charted consistently throughout the 1980s, with hits such as 'If You're Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right),' 'That Just About Does It' and 'This Ain't My First Rodeo.' In 1989, his Top 10 hit 'Chiseled in Stone,' co-written with Max D. Barnes, earned CMA Song of the Year honors.

An obvious influence on a new generation of country acts, Gosdin's 1982 hit, 'Today My World Slipped Away,' became a chart-topper for George Strait in 1997, and Brad Paisley's 2003 album, 'Mud on the Tires,' included his version of Gosdin's 1990 hit, 'Is It Raining at Your House.'

Earlier this year, in an interview with The Boot, Jake Owen said of Gosdin, "He's not as respected as he should be. To me, he's one of the greatest singers I've ever heard interpret a song. He's just got this coolness about him."

Funeral arrangements for Gosdin are incomplete.

NBC's Tim Russert Dies at 58
By DAVID ESPO and LAURIE KELLMAN,AP

WASHINGTON (June 13) - Tim Russert, who pointedly but politely questioned hundreds of the powerful and influential as moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," died suddenly Friday while preparing for his weekly broadcast. The network's Washington bureau chief was 58.

In addition to his weekly program, Russert appeared on the network's other news shows, was moderator for numerous political debates and wrote two best-selling books.

President Bush, informed of Russert's death while at dinner in Paris, swiftly issued a statement of condolence that praised the NBC newsman as "an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades. Tim was a tough and hardworking newsman. He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews. And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it."

NBC interrupted its regular programming with news of Russert's death, and in the ensuing moments, familiar faces such as Tom Brokaw, Andrea Mitchell and Brian Williams took turns mourning his loss.

Williams called him "aggressively unfancy."

"Our hearts are broken," said Mitchell, who appeared emotional at times as she recalled her longtime colleague.

Bob Schieffer, Russert's competitor on CBS' "Face the Nation," said the two men delighted in scooping each other.

"When you slipped one past ol' Russert," he said. "You felt as though you had hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league. I just loved Tim and I will miss him more than I can say."

The cause of death was not immediately clear. The network said on its Web site that Russert died of a heart attack, but Michael A. Newman, Russert's internist, later said that resuscitation was begun immediately and continued at Sibley Memorial Hospital, to no avail. An autopsy was pending, Newman said.

Russert, of Buffalo, N.Y., took the helm of the Sunday news show in December 1991 and turned it into the nation's most widely watched program of its type. His signature trait there was an unrelenting style of questioning that made some politicians reluctant to appear, yet confident that they could claim extra credibility if they survived his grilling intact.

He was also a senior vice president at NBC, and this year, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Russert had Buffalo's blue-collar roots, a Jesuit education, a law degree and a Democratic pedigree that came from his turn as an aide to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York.

One of his books, "Big Russ and Me," was about his relationship with his father.

On Sunday's program, Russert was to have interviewed Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a national co-chair of the McCain campaign, and Joe Biden, D-Del., an Obama supporter, in a debate format as surrogates for the two presidential candidates. The network said plans for Sunday's show were now uncertain.



Praise flowed quickly from those who knew Russert across the television interview room.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Russert was "the best in the business at keeping his interview subjects honest."

"There wasn't a better interviewer in television," Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential contender, told reporters in Ohio.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Obama's rival for the White House, hailed Russert as the "pre-eminent journalist of his generation."

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, said Russert was "one of the smartest, toughest television news journalists of all time. ... I can say from experience that joining Tim on 'Meet the Press' was one of the greatest tests any public official could face."

Carl P. Leubsdorf, president of the Gridiron Club, an organization of journalists, said in a statement, "It was a measure of the degree to which Tim Russert was respected in the journalistic world that he was the first broadcaster elected to membership in the Gridiron Club after the rules were changed in 2004 to end our century-old restriction to print journalists."

"He was an enthusiastic member and a willing participant in our shows. His fellow Gridiron members join with all of those who knew and respected Tim in mourning his untimely death."

"It is my sad duty to report this afternoon" that Russert collapsed and died while working in the network's Washington studios, Brokaw said when he came on the air.

"He'll be missed as he was loved — greatly," Brokaw said.

The network said on its Web site that Russert had been recording voiceovers for this Sunday's "Meet The Press" when he was stricken.

Russert had dozens of honorary college degrees, and numerous professional awards.

He won an Emmy for his role in the coverage of President Ronald Reagan's funeral in 2004.

He was married to Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair Magazine. The couple had one son, Luke.


Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2008-06-13 15:42:04

The Missouri Highway Patrol is continuing to investigate a Sunday morning (May 11) tour bus accident that claimed the life of gospel music legend Joyce "Dottie" Rambo, 74, of Nashville. Six other people in the bus, including her manager, were injured when the 1997 Prevost bus crashed into a guard rail and an embankment around 2:20 a.m. on Interstate 44 near Mount Vernon, Mo. At the time of the accident, the singer-songwriter was traveling to a Mother's Day performance at a church in North Richland Hills, Texas. Rambo began her gospel music career at age 12 and eventually wrote more than 2,500 songs and won a Grammy in 1968 for her album, The Soul of Me. Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2007, the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame, and she was inducted twice into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame -- as a solo artist in 1982 and with former husband Buck Rambo and their daughter, singer-songwriter Reba Rambo, as the Rambos singing group in 2001. Her new album, Sheltered, is scheduled to be released this summer. Her songs have been recorded by Dolly Parton, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Barbara Mandrell and many others. She and Parton recorded a duet for the title track of Rambo's 2003 album, Stand by the River.

Country Music Hall of Fame Member Eddy Arnold Dies at Age 89
Pioneer of the "Nashville Sound" Took Country Music to a Wider Audience
May 5, 2008; Written by Ronnie Pugh
Country Music Hall of Fame member Eddy Arnold died early Thursday morning (May 8) at NHC Place, an assisted living facility near Nashville at age 89. His wife of 66 years, Sally Gayhart Arnold, died in March while he was recovering in a Nashville hospital following hip replacement surgery.

One of the Nashville area's wealthiest residents, he also leaves an estate estimated to be in excess of $40 million. Before Garth Brooks came along, Arnold was easily country music's biggest record-seller. Sales of his discs from the mid-1940s to the present, in every recorded medium from 78s to CDs, have topped 80 million. Along the way, Arnold became a key figure in "urbanizing" country music -- smoothing it out, opening it to influences from the wider world of pop music -- a trend you could almost guess by knowing that his early musical favorites were Vernon Dalhart, Gene Autry, Gene Austin, and Bing Crosby. The list of those he influenced is headed by Marty Robbins and Jim Reeves.

Richard Edward Arnold was born in the West Tennessee community of Henderson in Chester County (he titled his 1969 autobiography It's a Long Way From Chester County) on May 15, 1918. He learned to play just enough guitar on a mail order Sears Roebuck model to accompany his pleasing and expressive singing voice at area social events. Every little bit of income helped his widowed mother, as the Arnolds lost their family farm to foreclosure and became sharecroppers after his father's death in 1929. By the time Arnold turned 17, he was singing part-time on radio and at venues in and around Jackson, Tenn., where he worked for an area funeral parlor.

Leaving his home country for larger entertainment markets, Arnold moved on to radio work in Memphis and St. Louis, where like many other rural entertainers of his day he mixed singing with rube comedy. His big break came in Louisville, Ky., in 1940, when he was hired by future Country Music Hall of Fame member Pee Wee King to play guitar and sing in King's Golden West Cowboys, a band that had previously starred on the Grand Ole Opry and been featured in at least one Gene Autry film. It was also in Louisville that he met his future wife, a radio fan named Sally Gayhart. They married Nov. 28, 1941.

In the process bringing of Eddy Arnold back to his home state for good, the Golden West Cowboys soon returned to Nashville and the Opry. Arnold gained wide exposure when the band joined the Camel Caravan, a 1942 tour of military bases in the Western Hemisphere, and the next year (1943) struck out on his own, armed only with a promise of radio work from WSM's Harry Stone. It was Stone who linked Arnold with Chicago publisher Fred Forster, and together the two men managed to interest RCA Victor Records in the young singer, an affiliation that would last for over 50 years with only a single minor hiatus.

Unfortunately, the musicians union's first long recording strike was going on then, and it would be December 1944 before Arnold and his band of Tennessee Plowboys made their first recordings. ("I felt like the world was passing me by," he later said.) That initial session in WSM's studios included his first version of "Cattle Call" (his somewhat incongruous cowboy theme song), "I Walk Alone" from the pop field (a hint of more to come) and a couple of maudlin tearjerkers, all framed by Ivan Leroy "Little Roy" Wiggins' crying steel guitar, the trademark sound of Arnold's earliest and countriest recordings.

A former Tampa dogcatcher named Tom Parker assumed the guidance of Arnold's career in 1945, and big things began to happen for both men. Even before his recording of "That's How Much I Love You" became the first of his many major hits, Arnold was co-hosting a Saturday midday network radio show for Mutual, Opry House Matinee. Chart-topping hits began coming regularly in 1947 with "What Is Life Without Love," "It's a Sin" and "I'll Hold You in My Heart" all reaching No. 1 in that breakout year. Arnold's lucrative publishing arrangement with New York's Hill & Range Songs made both parties a lot of money, much of it the huge 1948 crossover hit "Bouquet of Roses."

At this peak of his early stardom, Arnold left the Grand Ole Opry cast over (what else?) money, and he always bridled in later years when anyone suggested the Opry "made" him. "If the Opry made me," he'd respond, "why didn't it make the Fruit Jar Drinkers?" As one of his records of that era suggested, "Baby I've Got Other Fish to Fry," and he did -- moving over to starring roles in network radio with Mutual and CBS and two movies (Feudin' Rhythm and Hoedown) for Columbia Pictures. The RCA hits just kept coming ("Just a Little Lovin'," "Don't Rob Another Man's Castle," "One Kiss Too Many," "I'm Throwing Rice"), and in the early 1950s, Arnold added television to his network notoriety, hosting summer replacement shows for Perry Como (1952) and Dinah Shore (1953).

Arnold fired his Parker as his manager late in 1953 over a dispute never made public (they actually remained friends), and Parker soon moved on to Hank Snow and (most famously) Elvis Presley. By then, Arnold's record royalties, publishing and personal appearance income, plowed into such solid long-term investments as real estate and local utilities, had made him a wealthy man. He became one of the few country stars of his generation to make and keep a fortune, a rare achievement he modestly downplayed in such later assessments as "I guess they won't have to do any benefits for me."

Even before the coming of rock 'n' roll in the mid-1950s, Arnold's repertory evinced a move toward pop music in his duet with Jaye P. Morgan, "Mutual Admiration Society," and his 1955 remake of "Cattle Call" backed by Hugo Winterhalter's full orchestra. When rock came, innovations of some sort became almost a necessity for hard country artists who wanted their careers to survive. Arnold, already rich enough to consider retiring in his early 40s as the decade ended, soon found a second career and a new audience in the pop field, trading in his old Tennessee Plowboy duds for dinner jackets at concerts in fashionable nightclubs or in symphony halls singing with prestigious community orchestras.

His recordings, henceforth all made in Nashville and for years produced by Chet Atkins (the earlier country hits, produced by Steve Sholes, were usually done in New York or Chicago), featured full orchestration and vocal choruses, and helped pioneer the smoother "Nashville Sound," a style fully exploited by Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline.

Arnold actually hit his full stride with this style after Reeves' 1964 death, scoring such hits as "Make the World Go Away" and "Welcome to My World" (both No. 1 hits in 1965). Amidst this career renaissance, Arnold had the distinction of winning election to the Country Music Hall of Fame (1966) the year before he was elected the Country Music Association's entertainer of the year, a feat never equaled and not likely to happen again. A frequent guest on NBC's The Tonight Show, Arnold became the first country artist to host the program in Johnny Carson's absence.

His career record sales reached 60 million by 1970, then 80 million by 1985, based on RCA's own figures. He won Academy of Country Music's Pioneer Award in 1985, and after an all-but-continuous association of more than five decades with RCA, moved over to Curb Records in the late 1990s. He performed his last concert at the Hotel Orleans in Las Vegas on May 16, 1999 (the day after his 81st birthday), though he continued to do some recording and maintained his Brentwood business office for some years thereafter. He returned to RCA in 2005 to record his 100th album, After All This Time.

Besides the aforementioned and rather sketchy 1969 autobiography, there are two published Arnold biographies, both from 1997 -- Don Cusic's Eddy Arnold: I'll Hold You in My Heart (Rutledge Hill Press) and Michael Streissguth's Eddy Arnold: Pioneer of the Nashville Sound (Schirmer Books-Prentice Hall).

Arnold is survived by a son, Richard Edward "Dickie" Arnold Jr. of Nashville, a daughter, Jo Ann Pollard of Brentwood, Tenn., two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.