Don Gibson

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Singer/songwriter Don Gibson was one of the most popular and influential forces in '50s and '60s country, scoring numerous hit singles as a performer and a songwriter. Gibson's music touched on both traditional country and highly produced country-pop, which is part of the reason he had such a broad audience. For nearly a decade after his first hit single, "Sweet Dreams," in 1956, he was a reliable hitmaker, and many of his songs have become country classics -- they have been covered by a wide range of artists, including Patsy Cline, Ray Charles, Kitty Wells, Emmylou Harris, Neil Young, and Ronnie Milsap.

He was born Donald Eugene Gibson in Shelby, NC, the youngest of five children of Solon and Mary Gibson. His father, a railroad worker, died when Gibson was just two years old, and his mother remarried in the early '40s, when Don Gibson was still a boy -- by that time, the family survived as sharecroppers, but even as a boy the youngest Gibson hated farming, and as he grew older he made the decision to get as far away from it as possible. He ceased attending school regularly after the second grade, a decision that he regretted in the years to come -- perhaps in compensation, Gibson subsequently became a voracious reader across much of his adult life. And for all of his professed desire, even at a young age, to break away from a life on the farm, he was hindered by terrible emotional insecurity. Gibson was hopelessly shy all through life, defensive about his appearance -- to the point where, as a boy or a young man, he would avoid walking into places that were too crowded -- and also about his voice, which was characterized by a very bad stutter while he was growing up.

One escape that he had from those and other worries was the music he heard on the radio in the 1930s and early '40s. Even as a young boy, he would listen to the music and try to visualize himself as a performer. He took his first step toward this goal at 14 when he bought a guitar and learned some rudimentary chords. He was soon sitting with the instrument, watching and listening to other, older boys and men playing, and trying to pick up on what they were singing and playing. When he wasn't doing that, he was engaged in his other preferred pastime, making a living in the pool halls around Shelby as a teenage pool shark.

As he approached his mid-teens, Gibson's playing advanced to the point where he was approached by Ned Costner, a fiddle player, who began playing with him at Costner's home. The informal duo soon became a trio with the addition of Curly Sisk on second guitar, and they were soon playing at the Sisk family's home, a boarding house where the three became regular entertainment for the Sisk family and their tenants on Saturday nights. Before long, they even had a name, the Sons of the Soil, with Gibson playing a washtub bass. They were good enough so that in 1948, when Gibson was 16 years old (and Sisk only 14), they were hired as a duo on WOHS, the local radio station. And not long after that, Gibson as singer (but still playing bass, though no longer an adapted washtub) became the focal point of a new band put together by the station's program director, Milton Scarborough (who played accordion in the group). They were christened the Hi-Lighters, with Billy Roberts (trumpet), Gibson and Sisk, Scarborough and Doc Whitmire (accordions), and Jim Barber (fiddle). They were barely paid anything, but the exposure did an enormous amount for the members, especially Gibson, who was overcoming at least the most outward aspects of any insecurity he was feeling.He was still earning his living doing outside jobs, and the boys apparently didn't think in terms of where to go beyond WOHS. Then, in 1949, fate took a hand when a radio salesman named Marshall Pack chanced to visit the station and heard the Hi-Lighters. He was impressed with the entire group but most especially with Gibson's singing, and he, in turn,