Vern Gosdin

He was born Vernon Gosdin on 5 August 1934 in Woodland, Alabama, the sixth of nine children. He began singing at Bethel East Baptist Church, where his mother played piano. As a young man he sang in a gospel quartet with his brothers, and the family had its own program, The Gosdin Family Gospel Show, on WVOK in Birmingham. The brothers’ first record, “A Lonely, Lonesome Street” backed with “My Allowance,” was made in Nashville in 1959 for the Cullman label.

In 1961 Vern and Rex moved to Long Beach, California, and played bluegrass in a band called the Golden State Boys. The mandolinist Chris Hillman joined, and the band became the Hillmen. Over 1963 and 1964 they recorded an album at World Pacific Studio in Hollywood, with Hillman on mandolin and vocals, Vern on guitar and vocals, Parmley on banjo and Rex on bass, but it was not issued until 1969, on the Together label, as The Hillmen.

When the band broke up, Vern and Rex became the Gosdin Brothers and moved toward country music. They sang behind Gene Clark, the former Byrd, on his first solo album, Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers (Columbia, February 1967); the backing tracks, cut in Hollywood in the autumn of 1966, had Clarence White, Glen Campbell, Doug Dillard, Chris Hillman and Leon Russell among the players, and the brothers added their voices that November. With Gary S. Paxton producing at his studio in Bakersfield, they recorded “Hangin’ On” in July 1967 for Bakersfield International, and it reached No. 37 on the country chart. Capitol took up their masters and issued the album Sounds of Goodbye in September 1968, and their last Capitol session, in December 1968, produced the first version of “Till the End.”

In the early 1970s Gosdin left California and the music business, moved to Georgia and ran a glass company there. Emmylou Harris, whom he had known in California, sang with him on a demo of “Hangin’ On” and “Yesterday’s Gone,” and the tape won him a contract with Elektra. Paxton produced his Elektra records in Nashville, at Sound Stage Studio. The remake of “Hangin’ On,” with Harris on harmony, was his first solo single in October 1976 and reached No. 16; “Yesterday’s Gone” went to No. 9 and a new “Till the End” to No. 7 in 1977. Three Elektra albums followed, Till the End (1977), Never My Love (1978), whose title song, a cover of the Association’s hit with Janie Fricke among the backing singers, reached No. 9, and You’ve Got Somebody (1979).

He then recorded in Hendersonville, Tennessee, for Ovation, which gave him a No. 7 hit with “Dream of Me” in 1981, and for AMI, where “Today My World Slipped Away,” a song he wrote with Mark Wright, reached No. 10 in 1982. With the Compleat label he had his strongest run yet. “If You’re Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right)” and “Way Down Deep” both reached No. 5 in 1983, and “I Can Tell by the Way You Dance (You’re Gonna Love Me Tonight)” became his first No. 1 in 1984. That song came from There Is a Season (1984), whose sessions brought in Roger McGuinn and Emmylou Harris on “Turn, Turn, Turn (To Everything There Is a Season).” Compleat also issued a gospel album, If Jesus Comes Tomorrow (What Then) (1984), and Time Stood Still (1985).

Gosdin signed with Columbia in 1987 and worked there with the producer Bob Montgomery. The first album, Chiseled in Stone, recorded at Tree International Studios in Nashville in September 1987 and released in January 1988, gave him “Do You Believe Me Now” (No. 4), “Set ’Em Up Joe” (No. 1 in 1988), a tribute to Ernest Tubb, the title song (No. 6) and “Who You Gonna Blame It On This Time” (No. 2). “Chiseled in Stone” won the CMA’s Song of the Year in 1989 and was nominated for the Grammy for Best Country Song. Alone (1989), a concept album, brought his third No. 1, “I’m Still Crazy,” along with “That Just About Does It” (No. 4) and “Right in the Wrong Direction” (No. 10). In 1990 he re-recorded his earlier hits for 10 Years of Greatest Hits, which added “This Ain’t My First Rodeo” and “Is It Raining at Your House,” his last Top Ten single. In all, nineteen of his singles reached the country Top Ten between 1977 and 1990, three of them No. 1. He also sang duets with Tammy Wynette (“Some Things Will Never Change,” 1987) and George Jones (“All That We’ve Got Left,” 1988), and on Randy Travis’s “The Human Race” in 1990. Wynette once called him “the only other singer who can hold a candle to George Jones.”

Columbia released Out of My Heart in 1991 and Nickels and Dimes and Love, recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with Rick Hall producing, in 1993. Later recordings came out on smaller labels, and in 1997 he sang “Way Down Deep” with Ralph Stanley for Stanley’s Rebel duets album Clinch Mountain Country (1998). He was still recording in 2008, and released a box set that December.

Gosdin died at a Nashville hospital on 28 April 2009, at the age of 74. He was named to the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and in October 2017 he was inducted posthumously into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in its Songwriter/Artist category; the producer Buddy Cannon, a longtime friend, accepted on his behalf.