Lost on this day

The great country singer Faron Young was 64 on this day in 1996 when he passed away from suicide. He had a fine career, charting country hits from the 1950s on, and then, when he grew depressed because country music had changed and turned into something like the musical version of left-over omelets reheated, he grew angry over the loss of his fan base and record sales and concert attractions, so he ended it all.

He trained himself to sing on his family's dairy farm in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was his daily chore to milk the cows before going to school, and he used those cows as his first audience, singing to them the popular hits of the day. Not until he finished school and began looking for work as a singer did Faron turn to country music, and that happened because he was offered far more money to sing country than pop. He was a country singer when he got drafted, riding the crest of his first hit record "Goin' Steady" when the US Army drafted him in 1952. He soon became a singer with the US Army Band, replacing Eddie Fisher. 

Mustering out and back into civilian life, Faron began a long string of country hits which you have heard if you ever rode in my truck or car. The shift of country music to something so unpalatable shook him deeply in the 1980s, well after his final #1 hit "It's Four In The Morning" (1972) was no longer being played on the radio because it was so much more important for people to hear the Lukes and Clints and what-have-you. Faron could have done other things. He had a business mind and was the founder and publisher of the "Music City News" paper, which told the story of country music. He could have retired from singing as a businessman, but it hurt him so deeply that people no longer wanted to hear him sing that he decided to step off the stage, literally and figuratively.

I wish he could have gotten the help he needed. Suicide is the last thing I would ever do.