Faron Young

Faron Young was an American country music singer, songwriter, and producer, as well as an actor, who was active from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s.  Born on February 25th, 1932, he was the youngest of six children born to Harlan and Doris Young in Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.A.  Starting to perform whilst still at school, he initially imagined a career as a pop singer, before switching his allegiance to country music after watching Hank Williams on T.V.  After leaving college, Young's first releases were on Gotham Records, although by early 1952 he had signed for Capitol Records, where he was to record for the next ten years. Moving to Nashville, his first hit, Goin' Steady, reached number 2 on the U.S. Country Charts in October, 1952.  The following month, Young was drafted into the U.S. Army.  Whilst stationed at Fort McPherson, he met his future wife, Hilda Macon, whom he married in November, 1954, after being discharged.  The couple had three sons and a daughter together.  From 1954 to 1962, Young recorded mainly honky-tonk records for Capitol, the most famous being Willie Nelson's Hello Walls, which was a crossover hit in 1961, and won a gold disc for selling over a million copies.  In the mid-1950s, he also appeared as an actor in four low-budget films.  After drifting for a while musically, Young had a renaissance in 1971, when his song Four in the Morning gave him his fifth and final number-one hit on the U.S. Country chart, and was also a surprising number-three hit on the U.K. pop charts.  In 1972, he was charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience whom he claimed had spat at him whilst he was singing on stage.  Young's later life was plagued with depression and alcoholism.  In 1984, he fired a pistol into the roof of his home.  When he refused to seek help for his drinking problems, Young's wife divorced him in 1986 after 32 years of marriage.  On December 9th, 1996, Young shot himself in the head at his home, dying in Nashville, Tennessee, the following day.  A combination of feeling he had been abandoned by the music industry, as well as despondency over his declining health, were cited as reasons for his suicide.  His ashes were spread by his family on land owned by singer Johnny Cash and his wife, whilst the Cashes were away.  Faron Young was 64 years old.