Eddy Arnold, at 89; crooner widened appeal of country music

Singing such crossover songs as "Make the World Go Away," Eddy Arnold delivered country music to a national audience. In all, he had 28 hits reach the top of the country charts. (ap/file 1959)

LOS ANGELES - Eddy Arnold, who became the most successful country hit maker of all time as he helped transform what had long been considered "hillbilly music" from a rural phenomenon into music with national appeal, died yesterday. He was 89, a week short of his 90th birthday.

Mr. Arnold, an elegant, pop-influenced singer, died at a long-term care facility near Nashville, family spokesman and Arnold biographer Don Cusic said. His wife of 66 years, Sally, had died in March and Mr. Arnold had broken his hip the same month in a fall at his home.

Determined to transcend the rural poverty he had known as a child in Tennessee, he carved out an identity as an urbane crooner unrestricted by the trappings associated with country music stardom. He has been called "the Garth Brooks of his time" for creating the template still followed for country singers who reach beyond a niche audience to capture a broad following, a move that angered many traditional country fans.

"I've never thought of myself as a country and western singer," he told a reporter for The Charlotte Observer in 1968. "With the type of material I do, I'm really a pop music artist." He added, "I want my songs to be accepted by everyone."

"He epitomized how someone could become a huge star in this genre," Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, said. "He certainly set the bar: He sold 80 million records, had his own TV show, filled in for Johnny Carson as a 'Tonight Show' host. In some ways his career defines what it's like to end up at the top of the heap."

Mr. Arnold had a run of 57 consecutive top 10 hits from 1945 to 1954, among them "I'll Hold You in My Heart (Till I Can Hold You in My Arms)," which spent more than five months at No. 1 in 1947, and "Bouquet of Roses," which logged 19 weeks in the top spot the following year. Many of those songs, despite the twangy steel guitars and fiddles under his voice, appealed to large numbers of fans because of his mellow tenor, which was virtually free of a drawl.

"More than anyone in the 1940s, he helped change the image of the music from 'hillbilly' to 'country,' " Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times' former pop music critic, said yesterday. "He ranks with Johnny Cash as one of the great ambassadors of country music."

Mr. Arnold's music had a profound effect on succeeding generations of country performers.

"When I was about 15 years old, the only stuff I sang was Eddy Arnold," George Jones said in a statement. "He would be just about my whole show. I'd sing 'Bouquet of Roses' and 'I'm Throwing Rice (at the Girl I Love).' All I sang was Eddy until I heard Hank Williams."

Mr. Arnold acted as a mentor for many singers.

"He's given me a lot of advice," Josh Turner wrote in the liner notes for his 2006 album "Your Man," which reached No. 2 on Billboard's overall album chart, "but the one thing that stuck out in my mind when it came to making this record was when he told me, 'You go and record some love songs, because that's what people relate to.' He said, 'The relationship between a woman and a man relates to people better than anything else.' "

Although Mr. Arnold's popularity dipped in the late 1950s as rock 'n' roll emerged, it rebounded in the 1960s, after a crucial change in the people guiding him musically and professionally. That led to another run of hits that crystallized what became known as "the Nashville Sound," typified by swelling orchestral backgrounds and female choir voices behind songs such as "Make the World Go Away" and "I Want to Go With You," both No. 1 country hits.

"He always had a sense that his voice could carry him into the pop market," said Michael Streissguth, author of the 1997 biography "Eddy Arnold: Pioneer of the Nashville Sound." "It really was a vision that he had of where his career could go."

It was a career that spanned seven decades, from the 1930s, when he hosted a radio show for five years in Memphis, until 1999, when he last appeared on the country singles chart singing a duet with then-teenage singer LeAnn Rimes in a new version of his 1955 yodel-laden western hit "Cattle Call."

In the latest edition of Joel Whitburn's "Top Country Songs" volume collating Billboard's charts from 1944 to 2005, Mr. Arnold is ranked as the No. 1 country artist, logging 146 records in the Top 100 of Billboard's country singles chart, 28 of those making it to No. 1.

Richard Edward Arnold, born May 15, 1918, in Henderson, Tenn., grew up working on his parents' farm, only to see it repossessed during the Depression. His family became sharecroppers on what had been their own land.

His father died when Eddy was 11, so the boy started singing at church picnics and other events.

"His childhood made such an impression on him," Young said. "I would say he was driven, probably until his last breath, because he was still worried that some day he might wake up penniless."

As a boy he idolized "the Singing Cowboy," Gene Autry, as well as Bing Crosby, whose smooth, outwardly effortless style he later would emulate.

He landed a regular role on a radio show at WTJS in Memphis and in 1940 was hired as a singer for Pee Wee King and His Golden West Cowboys, which had a reputation for a more debonair brand of country dance music and was featured frequently on the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts.

Mr. Arnold was hired by the Opry as a solo performer in 1943. Early on he had been dubbed "the Tennessee Plowboy."

When he signed with Victor Records (which became RCA) and began his recording career, he was managed by Colonel Tom Parker, who later became Elvis Presley's manager. "All the things Parker did with Elvis," biographer Cusic said yesterday, "he got all those contacts from working with Eddy."

After Mr. Arnold fired Parker, he signed with a fledgling New York-based management company that strove to de-emphasize the bumpkin image often foisted upon him in those forums.

He returned to Nashville after recording with less success in New York. He connected with Chet Atkins, one of RCA's leading country producers, who shepherded him into "the Nashville Sound" style that had been working magic in the '50s for fellow country crooner Jim Reeves.

After Reeves died in a plane crash in 1964, his arranger, Bill Walker, gravitated to Mr. Arnold, and their collaboration resulted in the mid-1960s hits that revitalized his career.

Where other country stars flashed their success with bejeweled cowboy outfits and guitar-shaped swimming pools, Mr. Arnold remained the low-key country gentleman, quietly parlaying the money from his hit records into lucrative real estate investments in and around Nashville.

"He was a humble guy who didn't seem to care all that much about the razzle-dazzle surrounding the music business," said critic Hilburn. "He was just into going onstage (or into the studio) and singing his songs and then enjoying his hobbies and private life."

Mr. Arnold leaves a son, Richard Edward Jr., and daughter, Jo Ann Pollard, two grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.