Faron Young

Young was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the youngest of six children of Harlan and Doris Young. He grew up on a dairy farm that his family operated outside the city. Young began singing at an early age, imagining a career as a pop singer. However, after he joined some friends watching Hank Williams perform with nine encores on the Louisiana Hayride, Young switched to country music instead. He performed at the local Optimist Club and was discovered by Webb Pierce, who brought him to star on the Hayride in 1951, then broadcast on KWKH-AM. He graduated from Fair Park High School that year and attended Centenary College of Louisiana.

Young recorded in Shreveport, but his first releases were on Philadelphia’s Gotham Records.[2] By February 1952, he was signed to Capitol Records, where he recorded for the next ten years. His first Capitol single appeared that spring.

Young moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and recorded his first chart hit, "Goin’ Steady" a song now discovered to be written by Hank Williams, in October 1952, but his career was soon sidetracked when he was drafted into the United States Army the following month. "Goin' Steady" hit the Billboard country charts while Young was in basic training. It peaked at No. 2, and the US Army Band took the young singer to replace Eddie Fisher on tours—its first country music singer—just as "If You Ain't Lovin’" was hitting the charts.[2] He was discharged in November 1954.

From 1954 to 1962, Young recorded many honky-tonk classics for Capitol, including the first hit version of Don Gibson’s "Sweet Dreams". Most famous was "Hello Walls," a Willie Nelson song Young turned into a crossover hit in 1961.[2] It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.[3]

Faron Young in Raiders of Old California (1957)

During the mid-1950s, Young starred in four low-budget movies: Hidden Guns, Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer, Raiders of Old California and Country Music Holiday. He appeared as himself in cameo roles and performances in later country music movies and was a frequent guest on television shows throughout his career, including ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee. His band, the Country Deputies, was one of country music's top bands and they toured for many years. He invested in real estate along Nashville's Music Row in the 1960s and, in 1963, co-founded, with Preston Temple, the trade magazine, Music City News.

The same year, Young switched to Mercury Records and drifted musically, but by the end of the decade he had recaptured much of his fire with hits including "Wine Me Up". Released in 1971, waltz-time ballad "It's Four in the Morning" written by Jerry Chesnut[4] was one of Young's finest records and his last number one hit, also becoming his only major success in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at No. 3 on the pop charts. By the mid-1970s his records were becoming overshadowed by his behavior, making headlines in 1972 when he was charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience at a concert in Clarksburg, West Virginia, whom he claimed spat on him,[2] and for other later incidents. In the mid-70s, Young was the spokesman for BC Powder.[5]

Young signed with MCA Records in 1979, but the association lasted only two years. Nashville independent label Step One Records signed him in 1988 where he recorded into the early 1990s (including a duet album with Ray Price), then withdrew from public view. Though new country acts including BR549 were putting his music before new audiences in the mid-1990s, Young apparently felt the music industry, which had undergone a revolution of sorts in 1991, had mostly rejected him (a sentiment shared by a number of artists of his generation).[2]

Faron Young's son Robyn followed him into the country music business starting in 1975. Robyn was the main headliner at his father's night club, Faron Young's Jailhouse. In the early 1980s Robyn began touring with his father, performing as an opening act.

Faron Young briefly dated Billie Jean Jones before she became the second wife of country music superstar Hank Williams. It was through Young that Jones was first introduced to Williams, who went on to wed Williams in October 1952.

In 1952, while Faron Young was stationed at Fort McPherson, he met his future wife Hilda Macon, the daughter of an Army master sergeant and the great-granddaughter of Uncle Dave Macon. The couple married two years later in November 1954 after Young was discharged from the Army. They had four children, sons Damion, Robyn and Kevin, and a daughter Alana.

Young's later life was plagued with bouts of depression and alcoholism. In 1972, Young was arrested and charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience at a concert in Clarksburg, West Virginia, after claiming she spat on him.[2] Young appeared before a Wood County, West Virginia, justice of the peace and was fined $24, plus $11 in court costs.[6] On the night of December 4, 1984, Young fired a pistol into the kitchen ceiling of his Harbor Island home. When he refused to seek help for his drinking problem, Young and his wife Hilda separated, sold their home, and bought individual houses. When asked at the divorce trial if he feared hurting someone by shooting holes into the ceiling, Young answered "Not whatsoever." The couple divorced after 32 years of marriage in 1986.

A combination of feeling he'd been abandoned by country music and despondency over his deteriorating health were cited as possible reasons that Young shot himself on December 9, 1996. He died in Nashville the following day and was cremated.[7] His ashes were spread by his family over Old Hickory Lake outside Nashville at Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash's home while the Cashes were away.[8]

Damion Young, the oldest of Faron and Hilda Young's four children, died on November 25, 2006, at the age of 51, after suffering a long illness.

• In 2000, Young was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
• The cat owned by Peanuts character Frieda was named "Faron" after Young, whom Charles Schulz "admired very much",[9] but made few appearances in the strip.
• A live performance video clip of Young's "It's Four in the Morning" was the first music video to air on CMT when it launched on March 6, 1983.
• A country song by Tex Garrison mentions Faron Young in his opening lyrics with the lines "Got a stack of records when I was one, listened to Hank Williams and Faron Young."
• The Bottle Rockets make a wistful reference to Young in their song "Sometimes Found' on their album Brand New Year.
• Prefab Sprout recorded a country-tinged song called "Faron Young" on their album Steve McQueen. The chorus repeats the line "You give me Faron Young four in the morning".
• Faron's hits "Hello Walls" and "Alone with You" make brief appearances in the Dale Earnhardt biopic, "3".
• The Blazing Zoos' song "Still Up at Five", on their album "Chocks Away" is a sequel/homage to "It's Four in the Morning".
• "I Miss You Already" can be heard in the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Faron Young among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[10]

• 1956 Hidden Guns
• 1956 Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer
• 1957 Raiders of Old California
• 1958 Country Music Holiday
• 1966 Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar
• 1966 Nashville Rebel
• 1967 What Am I Bid?
• 1967 The Road to Nashville
• 1977 That's Country

Actor Fred Parker Jr. portrayed Young in the biopic I Saw the Light, released on March 25, 2016.[12]

• Cooper, Daniel (2004), In The Encyclopedia of Country Music, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-517608-7., p. 606-7
• Diekman, Diane. "Live Fast, Love Hard: The Faron Young Story." Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007, p. 27

• Faron Young at the Country Music Hall of Fame
• Faron Young biography and links
• Faron Young biography at CMT.com
• Faron Young obituary at CountryStandardTime.com
• Faron Young at IMDb
• "Faron Young". Find a Grave. Retrieved November 28, 2013.
• The short film Country Style USA Recruitment: Episode 19 is available for free download at the Internet Archive
• The short film Country Style USA Recruitment: Episode 35 is available for free download at the Internet Archive