On this day (October 17) in 1941, Earl Thomas Conley was born in Portsmouth, Ohio. Earning the label “thinking man’s country,” the singer-songwriter didn’t write songs so much as craft complex characters with rich inner worlds. Seizing control of the charts in the 1980s, Conley sent 24 singles to the top 10. Of those 24, 18 reached number one — including “Holding Her and Loving You” (1983) and “Love Don’t Care (Whose Heart It Breaks)” (1985). Throughout the decade, only two other artists — Alabama and Ronnie Milsap — racked up more chart-toppers.
On April 10, 2019, Earl Thomas Conley died from cerebral atrophy at age 77 in Nashville. Today, we honor his tremendous legacy on what would have been his 85th birthday.
Earl Thomas Conley Came Up the Hard Way
The son of a railroad worker, Earl Thomas Conley left his Portsmouth, Ohio home at age 14 after his father lost his job.
He moved in with an older sister in Jamestown, where he finished high school. Upon graduation, Conley turned down an art-school scholarship in favor of joining the U.S. Army.
During his service, he joined a Christian-influenced trio, which marked the first time he had ever considered music as a viable career path. Conley also developed a deep affection for classic country storytellers like George Jones and Merle Haggard.
“My stuff started with bluegrass music,” he Conley once explained in an interview. “That’s what inspired me, the people that came out of those hills in West Virginia and Kentucky. And, of course, Hank Williams Sr. down in Alabama.
“I was born in ’41, and I was raised up on that early stuff,” he continued. “Coming out of those mountains, there’s a different soul and a different feeling and a whole different deal than what it would be like to come from the city.”
After the Army
Following his discharge from the military, Earl Thomas Conley played Nashville clubs by night, supporting himself with a series of blue-collar day jobs in his hometown.
Seeing little movement in Music City, Conley moved to Huntsville, Alabama, to work in a steel mill. He met record producer Nelson Larkin, who helped him sign with independent record label GRT in 1974.
While Conley saw little success with his own recordings during this time, his songs were a hit with other artists. In 1976, Conway Twitty topped the U.S. country charts with Conley’s “This Time I’ve Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me.”
A Record-Setting Career
By the late 1970s, Earl Thomas Conley had permanently relocated to Nashville, writing for Nelson Larkin’s publishing house. After landing a deal with Warner Brothers, he scored his first Top 40 single, “Dreamin’s All I Do”, in 1979.
None of his other songs had the same success, and Conley left Warner Brothers for Sunbird Records, where he reunited with Larkin. His self-penned first single, 1980s’s “Silent Treatment”, reached number seven on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart.
The next year, Conley had his first number-one hit with “Fire and Smoke”. It marked the first of 18 chart-topping hits that decade, including 1983’s multi Grammy-nominated “Holding Her and Loving You”.
In 1984, Conley made history as the first artist in any genre to have four number-one singles from the same album, Don’t Make It Easy for Me.
“There was such soul in everything he did,” former RCA Nashville chief executive Joe Galante said in an interview with The Daily Tennessean. “You always talk about finding something unique. His voice certainly was that.”
Later Career
As tastes shifted with the dawn of the 1990s, Earl Thomas Conley saw his commercial sales decline. After his record label dropped him in 1992, he took a seven-year hiatus before returning to recording.
[RELATED: This Earl Thomas Conley Hit From 1983 Was Inspired by a Simon & Garfunkel Classic]
In 2001, Conley co-wrote Blake Shelton’s top 20 hit “All Over Me”, from the country star’s self-titled debut album.
Earl Thomas Conley also broke down country music barriers when he recorded “Too Many Times” with R&B artist Anita Pointer, of the Pointer Sisters.
The title track and lead single to Conley’s 1986 album, it climbed to number two on the country singles chart.
Featured image by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The post Born 85 Years Ago Today in Ohio, the Record-Setting Singer-Songwriter Who Won Over Fans With His Brand of “Thinking Man’s Country” appeared first on American Songwriter.