Merle Kilgore

Wyatt Merle Kilgore (born August 9, 1934 in Chickasha , Grady County , Oklahoma , † February 6, 2005 in Mexico ) was an American composer, lyricist, country singer and manager. His best known song is Ring of Fire , which he wrote with June Carter and which became a world hit in 1963 as interpreted by Johnny Cash .

Life

Kilgore grew up in Shreveport , Louisiana and began playing guitar as a child. At the age of 14 he met the country star Hank Williams at the Louisiana Hayride , from which a friendship developed over three generations. At the age of 16 Kilgore worked as a DJ on local radio in Shreveport, at the same time he began to work as a songwriter and singer. At the age of 18 he wrote his first big hit, More and More , with Webb Pierce , who was able to stay at number 1 on the American hit lists for ten weeks in 1954 .

After successfully completing his studies at Louisiana Tech School and several unsuccessful singles, Kilgore signed with Starday Records in 1959 and made his first own hit parade placement in 1960 with Dear Mama . The song Love Has Made You Beautiful , released a few months later, was to be his greatest success as a singer with number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 . In 1959 Kilgore moved to Nashville and wrote the song Johnny Reb for Johnny Horton , which reached number 10 on the Billboard charts. In 1962 the country classic Wolverton Mountain followed in collaboration with Claude King , and in the same year Kilgore composed the world hit Ring of Fire with June Carter .

The other publications of Kilgore had only limited success so that it 1969, the "Merle Kilgore Management" company founded, among other singers Jr. Hank Williams managed. He was on the board of the Country Music Association (CMA), at times even as its vice-president. Kilgore also tried his hand at acting, for example in 1966 in Steve McQueen -Western Nevada Smith and in 1980 in the film adaptation of Loretta Lynn's life story .

In 1998 Kilgore was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame .

Merle Kilgore died of lung cancer in a clinic in Mexico in 2005. He was buried in the Memory Gardens cemetery in Hendersonville near Nashville, where Johnny Cash and his wife June Carter Cash were also buried.

Web links

• Kilgore in the Nashville HOF ( March 9, 2008 memento on the Internet Archive )
• Merle Kilgore in the Internet Movie Database (English)