Carl Smith
Musician · 1927–2010 · Maynardville, Tennessee
Best known for
Lead Vocals
Guitar
Carl Smith was one of the defining honky-tonk stars of 1950s country music, a smooth-voiced Columbia Records hitmaker nicknamed “Mister Country” who strung together thirty top-ten Billboard hits—twenty-one of them consecutive—before easing into semi-retirement to raise cutting horses. His crisp, uptempo sides and sharp band the Tunesmiths helped carry the Grand Ole Opry sound through the decade, and in 2003 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
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- Born Carl Milton Smith on March 15, 1927, in Maynardville, Tennessee—the same small Union County town that produced Roy Acuff. As a boy he was captivated by the Grand Ole Opry on the radio and mowed neighbors’ lawns to pay for guitar lessons.
- After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1947, he returned to Knoxville station WROL, where he played string bass behind country performers Molly O’Day and Skeets Williamson while launching his own singing career.
- Producer Don Law signed him to Columbia Records in 1950, beginning a partnership that would last roughly a quarter century and yield the bulk of his hits.
- His breakthrough came in 1951 with “Let’s Live a Little” (No. 2 country) and “If Teardrops Were Pennies,” followed by his first chart-topper, “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way.”
- A string of No. 1 country hits followed across the early and mid-1950s, including “(When You Feel Like You’re in Love) Don’t Just Stand There” and “Are You Teasing Me” (both 1952), “Hey Joe” (1953), and “Loose Talk” (1954).
- He fronted a tight, swing-tinged backing band, the Tunesmiths, whose steel guitar and fiddle gave his records a bright, danceable snap that set him apart from the era’s weepers.
- A Grand Ole Opry member from the early 1950s, he left the show in 1956 and soon joined the touring Philip Morris Country Music Show, part of a shift toward television and package tours.
- His TV presence was substantial: he served as a rotating host on Five Star Jubilee in 1961 and hosted roughly 190 episodes of the syndicated series Carl Smith’s Country Music Hall, produced in Canada between 1964 and 1969.
- In 1952 he married singer June Carter, of the famed Carter Family; their daughter, Rebecca Carlene Smith, grew up to become country-rock star Carlene Carter. The couple divorced in 1956.
- In 1957 he married country singer Goldie Hill, known for the No. 1 hit “I Let the Stars Get in My Eyes”; the two remained together until her death in 2005 and raised three children.
- He recorded for Columbia until 1975, then moved to Hickory Records, cutting his final album for the Gusto label in 1983 before stepping away from music to concentrate on breeding and showing cutting horses.
- Smith spent his later years on a farm near Franklin, Tennessee, where he died on January 16, 2010, at age 82, seven years after his Country Music Hall of Fame induction.
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Carl Smith with the Carter Sisters and Mother MaybellePlayed on recording with Carl Smith with the Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle
