Jack Greene

He was born Jack Henry Greene on 7 January 1930 in Maryville, Tennessee, and learned guitar at ten. As a teenager he worked as a disc jockey at WGAP in Maryville, and by eighteen he was a regular on the Tennessee Barn Dance on WNOX in Knoxville. In the early 1950s he moved to Atlanta and formed the Peach Tree Boys, in which he sang lead and played drums and guitar for eight years. He settled in Nashville in 1959 with a new band, the Tennessee Mountain Boys, which opened for Ernest Tubb in 1961; the next year Tubb took him into the Texas Troubadours.

Greene is on Tubb’s Decca sessions from 30 August 1962, when the band cut “A House of Sorrow” and “No Letter Today” in Nashville with Owen Bradley producing. He was the drummer on “Waltz Across Texas,” recorded at RCA Victor’s Nashville studio on 19 April 1965 with Leon Rhodes, Cal Smith and Jerry Shook on guitars, Buddy Charleton on steel, Jack Drake on bass and Jerry Smith on piano, and he was still drumming on Tubb’s sessions in January 1967. Besides drums he played guitar, sang, acted as master of ceremonies and opened Tubb’s shows. On the Troubadours’ own session of 24 July 1963 he sang “The Last Letter,” and Decca released it in 1964 as his first single.

His first session under his own name was on 9 February 1965, when he recorded “Ever Since My Baby Went Away” and “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (Of Hurtin’ Me)”; the first became his first hit in 1966. On 6 August 1966 he recorded “There Goes My Everything,” which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the country chart and crossed over to pop audiences. The hits that followed, mostly cut with Bradley at Bradley’s Barn in Mount Juliet, included “All the Time,” “What Locks the Door,” “You Are My Treasure,” “Until My Dreams Come True” and “Statue of a Fool.” He was nominated for a Grammy three times, and his height and deep voice earned him the name “the Jolly Green Giant.”

In June 1969 he began recording duets with Jeannie Seely. Their “Wish I Didn’t Have to Miss You,” cut on 28 July 1969, reached No. 2 and was his last Top 10 record, and the two toured together as a stage show through the 1970s. Decca became MCA, which dropped him in 1976. He returned to the charts on the Firstline label with “Yours for the Taking,” recorded in Nashville in the fall of 1979, and kept recording for small labels, including a Christmas album with his band the Jolly Giants in 2003. His last album, Precious Memories, Treasured Friends, was made in Nashville between 2008 and 2010 with guests including George Jones, Lorrie Morgan, Vince Gill, Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Jeannie Seely and Riders in the Sky, and with his old Troubadours bandmate Leon Rhodes on lead guitar.

Greene marked forty years on the Opry in 2007 and retired from performing in 2011. He died at his home in the Nashville area on 14 March 2013, aged 83.