Jim Reeves

James Travis Reeves (August 20, 1923 – July 31, 1964) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician. One of the earliest pioneers and practitioners of the Nashville sound, he played a central role in the sonic development of country music in the 1960s. Known as "Gentleman Jim", his songs continued to chart for years after his death in a plane crash. He is a member of both the Country Music and Texas Country Music Halls of Fame.

James Travis Reeves was born on August 20, 1923, at his family home in Galloway, Texas, a small rural community near Carthage. The youngest of eight children of Thomas Middleton Reeves (1882-1924) and Mary Beulah Adams Reeves (1884-1980), he was known as Travis during his early years. He graduated from Carthage High School in 1942.

Reeves received an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas, where he enrolled to study speech and drama, but he left after six weeks to work in the Houston shipyards. He later returned to baseball, playing in semiprofessional leagues before signing in 1944 as a right-handed pitcher with a St. Louis Cardinals farm team. He spent three years in the minor leagues until a pitching injury severed his sciatic nerve, ending his athletic career.

Reeves' initial efforts to pursue a baseball career were sporadic, possibly due to his uncertainty as to whether he would be drafted into the military, as World War II enveloped the United States. On March 9, 1943, he reported to the Army Induction Center in Tyler, Texas, for his preliminary physical examination. He failed the exam (probably due to a heart irregularity), though, and on 4 August 1943, an official letter declared his 4-F draft status. Reeves began to work as a radio announcer and sang live between songs. During the late 1940s, he was contracted with a couple of small Texas-based recording companies, but without success. Reeves at this point was influenced by early country and western swing artists, including Jimmie Rodgers and Moon Mullican, as well as popular singers Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold, and Frank Sinatra. In the late 1940s, Reeves joined Moon Mullican's band, and as a solo artist, Reeves recorded Mullican-style songs, including "Each Beat of my Heart" and "My Heart's Like a Welcome Mat" in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

During these years, Reeves took a job as an announcer for KWKH-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana, then the home of the popular radio program Louisiana Hayride. According to former Hayride master of ceremonies Frank Page, who had introduced Elvis Presley on the program in 1954, singer Sleepy LaBeef was late for a performance, and Reeves was asked to substitute. (Other accounts—including that of Reeves himself, in an interview on the RCA Victor album Yours Sincerely—name Hank Williams as the absentee.)

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.