{"id":5874,"date":"2016-02-24T17:51:33","date_gmt":"2016-02-24T17:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skylight.gr\/administrator_wordpress\/index.php\/2016\/02\/24\/famous-country-singer-sonny-james-dies\/"},"modified":"2016-02-24T17:51:33","modified_gmt":"2016-02-24T17:51:33","slug":"famous-country-singer-sonny-james-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/2016\/02\/24\/famous-country-singer-sonny-james-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous country singer, Sonny James, dies…"},"content":{"rendered":"


Sonny James, a genial crooner of the 1960s and \u201970s 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, \u201cYoung Love,\u201d 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.) <\/p>\n

Several of Mr. James\u2019s subsequent records reached the country Top 10, but he didn\u2019t have another No. 1 country single until 1964, when he released the romantic ballad \u201cYou\u2019re the Only World I Know.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

All but the last of these were, like \u201cYoung Love,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s \u201cOnly the Lonely,\u201d from 1960, and the blues singer Jimmy Reed\u2019s \u201cBright Lights, Big City,\u201d from 1961.<\/p>\n

Mr. James\u2019s versions of both of those hits reached the top of the country chart during his late-\u201960s-to-early-\u201970s streak of consecutive No. 1\u2019s. So did his versions of the soul singer Brook Benton\u2019s \u201cEndlessly\u201d and the blues crooner Ivory Joe Hunter\u2019s \u201cSince I Met You, Baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI always tried to do material that fit me,\u201d Mr. James told Country Weekly magazine in 1995. \u201cWe\u2019d do a variety of material \u2014 ballads, up-tempo and even bluesy songs \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 his hope being to promote amity between whites and blacks at a time of widespread racial turmoil in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Source: NY Times<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sonny James, a genial crooner of the 1960s and \u201970s with 26 No. 1 country…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}