Country singer-songwriter who sang "Easy Loving," which won him the Country Music Association Song of the Year Award in 1971 and in 1972.
He started playing guitar at five years old. He quit school when he was twelve and joined the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II after lying about his age.
He was inducted in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2001.
He grew up in a sharecropper family with fourteen siblings.
He signed with Buck Owens' management company in 1969.
