Sonny James
Sonny James was a country singer, guitarist and fiddler from Hackleburg, Alabama, known as “the Southern Gentleman.” Between 1953 and 1983 he placed seventy-two records on the charts, twenty-three of them No. 1 hits, beginning with the 1957 crossover “Young Love,” and he was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2006. Early in his Capitol career he played fiddle on Jim & Jesse’s first sessions for the label.
He was born James Hugh Loden on 1 May 1928 near Hackleburg into a family of performers, and by the age of four he was on stage with his parents and sister as the Loden Family. The family soon had a regular Saturday program on WNRA in Muscle Shoals, later worked radio stations around the South and in 1949 had a show on WSGN in Birmingham. By his teens he had mastered the guitar and the fiddle and had won several fiddle championships. In the summer of 1950 he played guitar on WHBQ radio in Memphis, but that September his Alabama National Guard unit was called up for the Korean War.
After his service he went to Nashville, where his old friend Chet Atkins introduced him to Capitol’s Ken Nelson. Nelson signed him in 1952 and suggested the name Sonny James. Nelson had also signed the brothers Jim and Jesse McReynolds to Capitol, and at their first sessions, on 13 June 1952 at Castle Studio in the Tulane Hotel in Nashville, James played fiddle with Curly Seckler on guitar, Hoke Jenkins on banjo and Bob Moore on bass. The eight sides included “I’ll Wash Your Love from My Heart” and the Louvin Brothers’ “Are You Missing Me?,” their first single, and “Virginia Waltz” and “Are You Lost in Sin.”
His own records began to chart in 1953. He appeared on the Louisiana Hayride, where his fiddling and singing led Slim Whitman to hire him briefly for his touring band, and on the Big D Jamboree in Dallas, and from October 1955 he was a regular on ABC-TV’s Ozark Jubilee from Springfield, Missouri. “Young Love,” written by Ric Cartey and Carole Joyner and released late in 1956, went to No. 1 on both the country and pop charts early in 1957 and sold more than a million copies.
A run of labels followed: NRC, Dot and RCA. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1962 and returned to Capitol in 1963, and with “The Minute You’re Gone” he was back in the Top Ten. In August 1964 he first appeared with the vocal quartet that became his Southern Gentlemen, and that year “You’re the Only World I Know” gave him his first No. 1 since “Young Love.” From “Need You” in 1967 to “Here Comes Honey Again” in 1971 he had sixteen consecutive No. 1 country hits, among them “Heaven Says Hello” and “Running Bear,” and by Billboard’s count he spent more weeks at No. 1 between 1960 and 1979 than any other country artist. He co-hosted the first CMA Awards show in 1967.
In the 1970s he moved to Columbia, where he had eleven more Top Ten hits, and in 1973 he produced Marie Osmond’s million-selling “Paper Roses.” He went to Monument in 1979 and to Dimension in 1981, where “A Free Roamin’ Mind” was his last chart record, in 1983. He retired in 1984. The Alabama Music Hall of Fame inducted him in 1987. His election to the Country Music Hall of Fame was announced on the CMA Awards telecast in November 2006, and he and the Southern Gentlemen were formally inducted in May 2007. He died in Nashville on 22 February 2016.
