August 5, 1934 - April 28, 2009
Singer Vern Gosdin, who recorded country music hits like the award-winning "Chiseled in Stone" during a 30-year career, has died. Gosdin was 74 years old. Mount Olivet Funeral Home in Nashville, said Gosdin was under hospice care and died late Tuesday at an area hospital. The singer's administrative assistant, Dawn Hall, told a newspaper that he suffered a stroke a few weeks ago."Chiseled in Stone" was voted 1989 song of the year by the Country Music Association. Gosdin's other hits include "Set 'em Up Joe," "I Can Tell by the Way You Dance," "I'm Still Crazy," "That Just About Does It," "Who You Gonna Blame It on This Time," "Way Down Deep," "Dream of Me" and "Yesterday's Gone".
He idolized The Louvin Brothers and The Blue Sky Boys as a young man and sang in a gospel quartet called The Gosdin Brothers. Nicknamed "The Voice," an inheritor of the soulful honky tonk style of Lefty Frizzell and Merle Haggard rose to the top of the business and notched hit after barroom hit. Some of these scored hits in the 1970s and 1980s.
He was born August 5, 1934 in Woodland, Alabama. He was born the sixth child out of nine. His mother played the piano. He and his siblings were raised on a farm. in his late teens, his family moved to Birmingham and began hosting on a local radio station. Gosdin and his brother, Rex, moved to Long Beach, CA, in 1961. They began performing bluegrass music in the milieu that gave birth to country-rock, joining a group called the Golden State Boys that evolved into the Hillmen. Gosdin moved to Atlanta in 1972, raising a family and running a retail shop. But he never gave up on music completely. He performed at local clubs and began to gravitate toward Nashville, where Emmylou Harris, a friend of Gosdin's from his California days, was laying the foundation for a style of country music. Around 1976 Gosdin and Emmylou cut a demo single consisting of "Hangin' On" backed with a newly written song, "Yesterday's Gone." The demo got Gosdin signed to the Elektra label, and both songs cracked the country Top 20. In the late '70s he notched several major hits, including "Till the End" .
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