American singer/songwriter, guitarist and pianist, born
November 19, 1935 in Tallapoosa, Missouri.

His professional career started in the late 1950s, when he performed on a series of regional jamboree revues, including a TV show in Cape Girardeau, not far from Saint Louis. He met lyricist Bill Rice in the mid-1960s and formed a partnership that swept into Music City at the decade’s end, placing hit after hit with stars such as Mickey Gilley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Charley Pride. A commercially dominant duo for most of the ’Seventies: they won ten awards at the 1972 CMA ceremony alone.