Merle Kilgore
Musician · 1934–2005 · Chickasha, Oklahoma
Best known for
Songwriter
Merle Kilgore was a Shreveport-raised country songwriter, guitarist, and longtime Hank Williams Jr. manager whose catalog produced two of the most-covered country songs of the 1960s — “Wolverton Mountain” (Claude King, 1962) and “Ring of Fire” (with June Carter; Johnny Cash, 1963) — alongside the Webb Pierce No. 1 “More and More.”
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- Born Wyatt Merle Kilgore on August 9, 1934, in Chickasha, Oklahoma; raised in Shreveport, Louisiana.
- Carried Hank Williams’s guitar to the Louisiana Hayride at fourteen, beginning a three-generation relationship with the Williams family.
- Became the Hayride’s principal staff guitarist at sixteen.
- At eighteen wrote “More and More,” a 1954 No. 1 country single for Webb Pierce and his first million-seller.
- Co-wrote “Wolverton Mountain” with Claude King; King’s 1962 Columbia single spent nine weeks at No. 1 country and the pop Top 10.
- Co-wrote “Ring of Fire” with June Carter; Johnny Cash’s 1963 mariachi-flavored recording became one of the defining country records of the decade.
- Served as Hank Williams Jr.’s personal manager from the mid-1980s until his death.
- Served as Vice President of the Country Music Association and as President of the Nashville Songwriters Foundation and the Nashville Songwriters Association International.
- Inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame in 2004.
- Died February 6, 2005.