Famous country singer, Sonny James, dies…

Sonny James, a genial crooner of the 1960s and ’70s with 26 No. 1 country hits to his credit, died here on Monday. He was 87. His death was announced on his website. Nicknamed the Southern Gentleman for his affable manner and stylish mode of dress, Mr. James was best known for his 1956 hit, “Young Love,” a romantic ballad accompanied by acoustic guitar and doo-wop harmonies that topped the country and pop charts. It was the first of his No. 1 country singles. (It also became a No. 1 pop hit recorded by the actor Tab Hunter in January 1957.)

Several of Mr. James’s subsequent records reached the country Top 10, but he didn’t have another No. 1 country single until 1964, when he released the romantic ballad “You’re the Only World I Know.” It was a turning point: Twenty-one of his next 25 singles also went to No. 1, including 16 in a row from 1967 to 1972, many of them similar professions of young love.

All but the last of these were, like “Young Love,” released by Capitol Records, and virtually all were recorded in the smooth, sophisticated style of the reigning Nashville Sound, popularized by Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline.

But unlike other exponents of the Nashville Sound, who were drawn to material written expressly for the country market, Mr. James often recorded versions of recent pop and rhythm and blues hits, like Roy Orbison’s “Only the Lonely,” from 1960, and the blues singer Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City,” from 1961.

Mr. James’s versions of both of those hits reached the top of the country chart during his late-’60s-to-early-’70s streak of consecutive No. 1’s. So did his versions of the soul singer Brook Benton’s “Endlessly” and the blues crooner Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You, Baby.”

“I always tried to do material that fit me,” Mr. James told Country Weekly magazine in 1995. “We’d do a variety of material — ballads, up-tempo and even bluesy songs — but I stayed the same. I tried to give the fans the kind of songs they had come to expect. I think that was the reason I had such success.”

Mr. James said he had been motivated to record R&B in part as a way to introduce songs that were popular among African-Americans to his mostly white, mainstream country music audiences — his hope being to promote amity between whites and blacks at a time of widespread racial turmoil in the United States.

Source: NY Times