Jack Anglin
Musician · 1916–1963 · Franklin, Tennessee
Best known for
Harmony Vocals
Guitar
Jack Anglin was the tenor voice and rhythm guitarist of Johnnie & Jack, one of the most popular country harmony duos of the postwar era. Over a partnership that stretched from the late 1930s to his death in 1963, he and brother-in-law Johnnie Wright cut a string of RCA Victor hits — among them the trailblazing “Poison Love” and the chart-topping “(Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely” — that helped carry close brother-style harmony singing into the honky-tonk age.
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- Born May 13, 1916, on a farm outside Franklin, Tennessee, to John B. and Lue (Tucker) Anglin, he was taught guitar by his father and was singing on local radio by age fourteen despite never learning to read music.
- He first recorded with a family act billed as the Anglin Twins and Red: on November 5–6, 1937, the Anglin Brothers — Jack on guitar alongside his brothers Jim and Red — cut sessions in San Antonio for ARC’s Vocalion imprint, releasing fourteen sides including “Just Inside the Pearly Gates” before the group disbanded in 1939.
- While working at a Nashville hosiery mill he met and married Louise Wright, and through her came to know her brother Johnnie Wright; the two men first sang together as the Backwater Boys at a flood-relief benefit and formalized the Johnnie & Jack duo in 1938.
- Anglin took the high tenor harmony above Wright’s lead, the pairing fronting a band billed as the Tennessee Mountain Boys and often sharing the bill with Wright’s wife, Kitty Wells.
- Before World War II he briefly played the Grand Ole Opry as a member of Roy Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys, a stint cut short when the war interrupted his career.
- He enlisted in the U.S. Army during the war, serving roughly four years in Europe and discharging as a medical orderly sergeant, after which he and Wright reunited.
- The duo joined the cast of the Louisiana Hayride from its 1948 launch, building the regional following that carried them back to Nashville.
- Signed to RCA Victor, they broke through in 1951 with “Poison Love,” a No. 4 country hit whose rumba-flavored beat — the idea of studio bassist Ernie Newton — was an early infusion of Latin rhythm into mainstream country; “Ashes of Love” and “Crying Heart Blues” followed in the same period.
- Their commercial peak came in 1954 with “(Oh Baby Mine) I Get So Lonely,” a No. 1 country hit, and a No. 4 reading of “Goodnight, Sweetheart, Goodnight.”
- Johnnie & Jack became permanent members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1952 and recorded for RCA Victor through 1962, touring relentlessly across the South and beyond.
- On March 8, 1963, hurrying to Patsy Cline’s memorial service after attending funerals for musicians killed in the same plane crash, Anglin lost control of his car on New Due West Avenue in Madison, Tennessee, and was killed; he was buried in Goodlettsville. His death ended the duo, and Wright went on to a solo career, topping the country chart in 1965 with “Hello Vietnam.”
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Johnnie and Jack: The Tennessee Mountain BoysPlayed on recording with Johnnie and Jack: The Tennessee Mountain Boys
