Donald Eugene Gibson
(April 3, 1928 – November 17, 2003) was an American songwriter and country musician. A Country Music Hall of Fame inductee, Gibson penned such country standards as "Sweet Dreams" and "I Can't Stop Loving You" and enjoyed a string of country hits from 1957 into the early 1970s.
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DON GIBSON TICKETS
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Biography
Don Gibson was born in
Shelby, North Carolina, into a poor
working-class family, and he dropped out of school in the second grade.
His first band was called
Sons of the Soil
, with whom he made his first recording in 1948.
In 1957, he journeyed to
Nashville to record "
Oh Lonesome Me" and "I Can't Stop Loving You" for
RCA. The afternoon session resulted in a double-sided hit on both the country and pop charts.
"Oh Lonesome Me" set the pattern for a long series of other RCA hits. "Blue Blue Day", recorded prior to "Oh, Lonesome Me" was a number 1 hit in 1958. Later singles included "Look Who's Blue" (1958), "Don't Tell Me Your Troubles" (1959), "Sea of Heartbreak" (1961); "Lonesome No. 1," "I Can Mend Your Broken Heart" (1962), and "Woman (Sensuous Woman)", a Number one country hit in 1972.
Gibson recorded a series of successful
duets with
Dottie West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the most successful of which were the Number two country hit "Rings of Gold" (1969) and the top 10 hit "There's a Story Goin' Round" (1970). West and Gibson released and album together in 1969, titled
Dottie and Don
. He also recorded several duets with
Sue Thompson among these being the Top 40 hits, "I Think They Call It Love" (1972), "Good Old Fashioned Country Love" (1974) and "Oh, How Love Changes" (1975)
A talented songwriter, Gibson was nicknamed "The Sad Poet," because he frequently wrote songs that told of loneliness and lost love. His song "I Can't Stop Loving You", has been recorded by over 700 artists, most notably by
Ray Charles in 1962. He also wrote and recorded "Sweet Dreams," a song that would become a major 1963
crossover hit for
Patsy Cline.
Roy Orbison was a great fan of Gibson's
songwriting, and in 1967, he recorded an album of his songs simply titled
Roy Orbison Sings Don Gibson
. Additionally, Gibson's wide appeal is shown in
Neil Young's recorded version of "Oh Lonesome Me" on his 1970 album
After the Gold Rush
, which is one of the very few songs Young has recorded that was not penned by himself.
Gibson was inducted into the
Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1973, and in 2001, he was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame.
On his death in 2003, he was buried in the Sunset Cemetery in his hometown of
Shelby,
North Carolina.
References