Claudia Thompson born 31 December 1936

Claudia Thompson (31 December, 1936 – 30 July. 2020) was a mysterious jazz singer who for nearly 60 years, was only known by her one album, until a discovery pushed a new record label to right the wrongs of history. 

Claudia Thompson’s parents separated when she was young and growing up in Los Angeles, her mother would soon have dreams of fancy about becoming the mother of a Hollywood star. Claudia showed a natural ability to harmonize along with music and her mother began entering her into local talent contests. Claudia sang beautifully but had to fight a natural shyness. She was a light-skinned African American girl, and could quickly become the center of attention -- whether she wanted to or not -- with her head of bright naturally blonde hair. Today she would have been seen as beautiful but it was the early 1950s and such physical characteristics -- along with her poor vision -- was enough to get her bused with the "other funny-looking kids" she later recalled. 

Original cover photo

Claudia learned to read music to accompany her natural singing ability and enjoyed to entertain in small groups and school choirs. Eventually her voice caught the attention of Ramey Idriss who signed her to a contract and was able to land her a record deal, and thus, "Goodbye to Love" was born. Recorded at the famous Capitol Records recording studio in Hollywood, everyone involved felt they had a hit on their hands. Barney Kessel even gave her a fatherly talk to make sure she didn't let the praise and success go to her head. "Remember there's a big world out there, with plenty of danger and pitfalls lurking about," he cautioned her. 

Claudia may have been bracing for success, but the first sign that things wouldn't work out was when a white model was chosen for the album cover rather than Claudia herself. She felt "terribly hurt" by the decision but was warned "not to make trouble" over it. But squabbles among record executives outside her control sank the album further. Jack Ames, the album's producer and owner of Edison International, didn't get along with the distributor, resulting in record stores not having the album in stock. A local jazz radio station would play songs from the record, but it did little good when no one could find it for sale. With the only records leaving the warehouse being the ones Claudia herself was taking for self-promotion, Ames eventually axed the record altogether. Stuck in limbo, Claudia paid Ramey Idriss to get out of her contract. 

                              

But failure wasn't something Claudia dwelled on. Not long after "Goodbye to Love," she met another fellow jazz singer named Ira Thomas. They began dating and hit it off right away, but Ira wanted to move to New York to further his career. Neither had ever been to NYC but took a chance and thus began the start of a multi-year, globe-trotting career for the duo. They would marry in 1962 in New York, shortly before leaving for Europe. From there they toured in the UK, France, and Germany, singing jazz standards. They also went to Asia spending time in Bangkok, Japan, and even a very brief USO stint in Saigon. By about 1968 they got an offer to perform back in the states, which would let them be closer to family in Los Angeles once again. They left years earlier with only $500 to their name. They were coming back home... now with $250 total instead. 

Their musical careers back home weren't much more successful and by the 1970s they had to get "real jobs" and put their singing on hold. It wasn't until the late 1980s that the itch to perform came back, and they again began to tour the jazz circuit, spending time in the 1990s in Austin, Texas; Valencia, Spain; and finally, Las Vegas, Nevada, where they would ultimately retire. The couple maintained a website  where Claudia wrote essays and they sold CDs and books of their work. 

Ira would pass away at the age of 80 on September 4, 2014, leaving Claudia to maintain the site on her own. The website did have a blog section that Claudia would occasionally update on. If she had seen a news story about #FindTheGirlsOnTheNegatives, she gave no acknowledgment of it. Ira and Claudia never had any children, so it's possible without a connection to the younger generation rediscovering "Goodbye to Love," they were completely oblivious to its crate-digger status. 

Claudia sold CD copies of "Goodbye to Love" but seemed unaware of the Modern Harmonic reissue in 2016. The Internet can be an amazing tool to find and connect with folks from all over the world. It's tragic that here was Claudia Thomas, maintaining her and her husband's website online, but still largely unseen. The start of the pandemic in March of 2020 had Claudia remark on her blog that it looked like "we are all in for a big outrageous time." She later noted a planned "bucket list gig" would have to be done as a video instead. Her final blog post on May 6, 2020, had her asking for help on how she could get her video online. "All for now!!!" she wrote. "Any of u out there who could help please let me know." 

Claudia never finished her video. She passed away two months later, on July 30, 2020, at the age of 83. No one wrote Claudia T. Thomas an obituary. Just over a year after her death, "Goodbye to Love" would be reissued, her face gracing the cover for the very first time. 60+ years overdue and tragically, just a year too late.

(Edited from an article by News Fedora @ Needles and Grooves Forum)

Michael Nesmith born 30 December 1942

Robert Michael Nesmith or Mike Nesmith, (December 30, 1942 – December 10, 2021) was an American musician, songwriter, and actor. He was best known as a member of the pop rock band the Monkees and co-star of the TV series The Monkees (1966–1968).

Robert Michael Nesmith was the only child of Warren and Bette Nesmith, who divorced when he was four. Bette remarried and relocated to Dallas where, in her capacity as executive secretary at Texas Bank and Trust, she developed her own typewriter correction fluid. In 1979, a few months before her death, she sold her Liquid Paper Corporation to Gillette for $48 million. Her son and heir finally acquired financial freedom. 

As a teenager Nesmith dabbling in music and drama at school before enlisting in the US Air Force in 1960. Two years later he was honourably discharged at his own request, swapping mechanics for music. Cutting his teeth in touring folk, country and rock’n’roll bands, he moved to Los Angeles and fell in with the fertile singer/songwriter scene at the legendary Troubadour venue on the Sunset Strip. 

A publishing and recording deal followed, Nesmith released his first single, “Wanderin’,” in 1963. It didn’t garner much attention, nor did recordings he released in 1965 under the pseudonym Michael Blessing, but his songs started to find an audience through other performers. Frankie Laine cut Nesmith’s “Pretty Little Princess” in 1965, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band recorded “Mary, Mary” on its groundbreaking 1966 LP, “East-West.” 

Despite these achievements, Nesmith struggled to make ends meet, so he decided to audition for “The Monkees,” a television show that producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider patterned after the Beatles’ comedic films. Each of the four members of the Monkees was chosen to fill a certain archetype. Nesmith was pegged to be the “serious” member of the Monkees, standing in contrast to the wacky Micky Dolenz, cute heartthrob Davy Jones and convivial Peter Tork. Nesmith didn’t lack humor: He was laconic and sardonic, qualities that served him well on screen. 

The Monkees became a pop phenomenon after the television series debuted in September 1966. While the Nielsen ratings were solid, the group’s record sales were staggering. “The Monkees” and “More of the Monkees,” their first two LPs, topped the Billboard album charts for 31 consecutive weeks spanning 1966 and 1967, led by such hits as “Last Train to Clarksville,” “I’m a Believer” and “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You.” But when their television show was cancelled after its second season wrapped in 1968, the Monkees made one more venture into visual arts, filming the trippy, postmodern comedy “Head” with director Rafelson and co-screenwriter Jack Nicholson, but the movie flopped, bolstering the notion that the Monkees were in commercial decline. Soon, Tork left the group, and Nesmith followed him after completing work on two Monkees albums in 1969. 

                              

He struggled to gain a commercial foothold as a solo artist, although the three albums he recorded as Michael Nesmith and the First National Band have long been considered classics of the nascent country rock genre. The Second National Band duly followed (with Jose Feliciano on congas) but when this too ended in commercial failure, he turned to production, working on Bert Jansch’s 1974 album LA Turnaround. His Pacific Arts production company, formed in 1974, pioneered the home video market, but collapsed in a dispute with PBS over licensing rights. When a federal jury eventually awarded Nesmith $47 million in 1999, he quipped, “it’s like catching your grandmother stealing your stereo – you’re glad to get your stereo back, but you’re sad to find out that Grandma’s a thief”. 

The inadvertent innovation continued when Nesmith created a makeshift music video for his 1977 single Rio. Intrigued by the promotional possibilities of the embryonic format, he produced the PopClips music video show for cable TV channel Nickolodeon, then sold it to Time Warner, who used it as a template for MTV. In a satisfying twist, MTV repeats of The Monkees introduced the group to a new audience in the Eighties, while the Nesmith-produced videos for Lionel Richie’s Hello and Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel received heavy rotation on the channel. 

Nesmith’s involvement in the various Monkees reunions was sporadic and often confined to one-off appearances. However, he did rejoin his three amigos in 1996, marking the band’s 30th anniversary with the Justus album and accompanying TV special Hey, Hey, It’s the Monkees, before contributing to the 50th anniversary album Good Times! Jones passed away in 2012 and Tork in 2019. Latterly, Nesmith toured with Dolenz as the Mike and Micky Show. 

Following quadruple bypass surgery in 2018 and the pandemic shutdown of live music, he had made sufficient peace with the band’s legacy to embark on the Monkees Farewell Tour, which ended in Los Angeles less than a month before his death at his home in  Carmel Valley, California from heart failure on December 10, 2021. He was 78. 

(Edited from obit by Fiona Shepherd @ The Scotsman, Los Angeles Times  & Wikipedia)

Billy Gray born 29 December 1924

Billy Gray (29 December 1924 – 27 March 1975) was a Western swing guitarist. 

Billy Gray was born in 1924 in Paris, Texas and raised in a poor family. After purchasing his first guitar from a local pawnshop, at 19, Gray organized a band based on the western swing style popular in the area. He hosted his own radio show in Paris, featuring his band, and they spent the next few years on a successful touring circuit around Texas and the Southwest. 

During the late '40s Gray moved to Dallas and joined Bob Manning's Riders Of The Silver Sage. Gray sang on Manning's 1948 recordings for Dude including Reading Your Letter With Tears In My Eyes, Old Folks Boogie and Green Light, the original version of a song which Hank Thompson recorded for Capitol. 

In the early 1950s Gray relocated to Dallas, where he met and befriended Hank Thompson. He became the bandleader and guitarist of Thompson’s Brazos Valley Boys. He and Thompson began writing songs together, and founded two publishing companies, the Texoma Music Publishing Company and the Brazos Valley Publishing Company. The two co-wrote some of Thompson's greatest hits, including "Waiting in the Lobby of Your Heart", "The New Wears Off Too Fast", and "A Fool, a Faker." 

                              

In 1954, Gray released a duet with rockabilly vamp Wanda Jackson. "You Can't Have My Love" became a chart hit. The following year, Gray premiered his own seven-piece dance band, the Western Okies, at Oklahoma City's legendary Trianon Ballroom where Thompson held court during 1952-54. The band, including Texas Playboy Bobby Koefer on steel, made fine records but with the national acceptance of rock'n'roll.

Gray's brand of Western swing took a nosedive and the group soon broke up. Their leader remained with Decca long enough to record with Mimi Roman and to cut this cover of Marty Robbins's Tennessee Toddy, a classic tale of honky tonk violence which has been reissued countless times on rockabilly and hillbilly compilation records. 

Gray worked steadily throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s as a guitarist for bands such as the Nuggets and the Cowtowners, and he also appeared on the TV show Music Country Style. Gray's other records appeared on Monument (1959) and Longhorn (1960), Vandan and Liberty (1963). In 1965 he made what was to be his last recording for Longhorn Records. Although his songwriting and publishing endeavours were successful, stardom under his own name proved elusive, and he retired from the public arena. 

Billy Gray died on 27 March 1975 while undergoing heart surgery. 

(Edited from AllMusic & Bear Family notes)

Eddy Doorenbos born 28th December 1921

Eddy Doorenbos (December 28, 1921 – March 25, 2013) was a Dutch singer, bassist, guitarist, pianist, composer, lyricist, painter and entertainer. 

Born in Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands, Eddy’s musical career started around 1945. He left for Brussels with Han de Willigen 's orchestra to play music and sing for the American troops, who were stationed in Belgium , France and Germany, for two years. Doorenbos was a great admirer of Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra and achieved great fame as a vocalist with Ab de Molenaar's legendary Miller Sextet, to which he was associated from 1947 to 1961 .

One of the hits from that time was the song "Smoke smoke that cigarette '. There were many radio appearances and long-term engagements in famous establishments in the Netherlands, as well as extensive foreign tours (US Forces in Belgium, France and Germany; Indonesia; Sweden; Denmark). In 1956 and 1957 Doorenbos was voted favourite singer in the poll of the magazine 'Rhythm'. 

In 1961 he left The Millers to sing for a year, among other things, with the orchestra of his good friend clarinetist and saxophonist Herman Schoonderwalt. After the rise of pop music, interest in swing disappeared rather suddenly. Doorenbos decided to leave the Netherlands and went to Spain, where he would stay for some twenty years with an interruption of a few years. He settled on the Costa del Sol in 1965, enjoyed the sunny climate and discovered that he had even more artistic gifts: he took up painting, and this with success. 

His work was discovered by the jet set in Marbella and he sold canvases to Gina Lollobrigida, Anita Ekberg and Sean Connery , among others . He is also listed in the large Lexicon '500 years of Dutch painting' and had exhibitions in Spain, France, Switzerland, Sweden and the Netherlands. In 1968 he visited the Netherlands a number of times to make radio and gramophone recordings as part of a Miller reunion organized by producer Skip Voogd, which were later also released on CD. 

               Here's "Taking A Chance On Love" from above LP.

                              

In the 1970s , Doorenbos also lived in Brussels for four years. At that time he had a gallery in Knokke and regularly performed in Belgium for the French-language channel RTB . He then returned to Spain and settled in Marbella. In 1984 he returned to his homeland. Except for a short break (in the period from 1995-1996 he lived on the island of Lanzarote), he continued to live in the Netherlands. Doorenbos has always remained true to music. From the 90s he performed with his own quartet The Swingmill, had radio broadcasts with The Skymasters and sang with many bandsand ensembles. 

Doorenbos can be heard on all The Millers' CDs and has made three CDs under his own name since 1989: Still Together with The Swingmill, Here I Go Again and Gimme That Wine. In 1994 he also recorded a CD with Dutch-language duets with actress-singer Joke Bruijs . He made a rap version of his great Miller success Smoke, Smoke That Cigaret in 1996, combined with a video clip , which was regularly shown on TMF. Since 1997, Doorenbos could be heard in bars of Dutch hotels for many months a year. In addition, he regularly performed at home and abroad, usually on exclusive private occasion parties, but also at jazz festivals and in clubs. 

In 2011 his book “Gentleman of Swing” was published; an autobiography about his life and career. “Music keeps me young. And because I have asthmatic bronchitis, I've always been very careful with my breathing and I've spared my voice. I've never had lessons, but I've never sung my voice to pieces. I just have that voice,” Doorenbos told the ANP in March 2011. 

He eventually passed away in his sleep in Barendrecht, March 25, 2013, at the age of 91. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & AD News Media)

Booty Wood born 27 December 1919

Mitchell W. Wood Jr,. better known as Booty Wood (December 27, 1919 – June 10, 1987) was an American jazz trombonist. 

Wood was born in Dayton, Ohio. As a youngster he was fascinated by the trombonists in the passing parade bands. When he eventually acquired a trombone he wasn’t happy with its limitations, but as he couldn’t afford a trumpet he had to make do with  his  first instrument. After a while he began to play in a little jazz group and things began to get better. 

His early influences were mainly trumpet players, particularly the brothers Snooty and Granville Young. Snooty, later famous for work in the Lunceford and Basie bands, got Booty his first professional job at the age of thirteen in a local twelve piece band. From then on he was committed to Jazz and for seven years his education was interrupted by musical adventuring. In fact, he returned to school for the last time when he was nineteen and graduated with a sister three years younger than himself. 

His subsequent career brought him experience in bands large and small, working with Tiny Bradshaw and Lionel Hampton in the early '40s. During WW2, Wood played in a Navy band with Clark Terry, Willie Smith, and Gerald Wilson, then reteamed with Hampton after his discharge. He joined Arnett Cobb's small band in 1947 and 1948, played with Erskine Hawkins from 1948 to 1950, and with Count Basie in 1951. 

Wood left music for a while before joining Ellington in 1959 and working with him until 1960. He rejoined in 1963, but only stayed briefly. Wood returned a third time in the early '70s. During his time with Ellington, Wood became a skilled specialist in playing with the plunger mute. In his unmuted solos, his style resembled that of Trummy Young. 

Booty also worked with Earl Hines in 1968, and with Mercer Ellington in the '70s. Wood recorded with the Count Basie Orchestra from 1979 to the mid-'80s. 

He died in his birth-town  on June 10, 1987 in Dayton, Ohio at the age of 67 years old. 

(Scant information Edited from the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz & album liner notes) 

Penny Nichols born 26 December 1947

Penny Nichols (December 26, 1947 – October 29, 2017) was an acclaimed American folk musician and songwriter. 

Penny Nichols was born in Orange County, California. She started her amazing music career in the early 1960s as a folk singer in coffeehouses around Orange County. During these formative years, she shared stages with many legendary artists including Jackson Browne, Tim Buckley, Linda Ronstadt  Jennifer Warnes and others. She sang in a bluegrass band with John, Bill & Alice McEuen until John left to take Jackson Browne’s place in The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Penny then formed a duo with Kathy Smith called the Greasy Mountain Butterballs which toured Vietnam in the fall of 1966. Upon returning, she opened for numerous artists at The Troubadour and Ash Grove clubs in Hollywood. 

In the spring of 1967, Penny rode up to San Francisco on the back of a Harley motorcycle and decided to stay there for a while. She performed in concerts and clubs all over the Bay Area including the Fillmore, the Avalon, and the Matrix. During the “Summer of Love,” Penny played at the Big Sur Folk Festival (June 28–29, 1967 with headliners Joan Baez and Judy Collins) and recorded her first album, Penny’s Arcade, for Buddha Records. After touring the U.S. promoting her album in the fall, she toured Europe in the winter of 1968, staying with George & Patty Harrison and recording at Apple Studios. 

                             

In the mid-1970s, Penny was briefly married to actor and musician Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Credibility Gap, SNL, The Simpsons). In 1975, she began to perform around Los Angeles with her jazz band, the Black Imp, and opened for Little Feat. During this time Penny also wrote and performed commercials for Toyota’s campaign to plant a tree for every car bought, for Carnation Dairies, and produced a public service announcement for the Navajo Nation called “Black Mesa” to protest the misuse of the land around the Four Corners power stations in Arizona. 

In 1977, while working with Emitt Rhodes on a record for Elektra, Penny joined Jimmy Buffett & the Coral Reefers. An original “reeferette,” she appeared in the movie FM with the band, toured the country, and earned a Platinum Record for her singing on the album Son of a Son of a Sailor. She also sang backup on albums by Roy Forbes, Jennifer Warnes (“Shot Through the Heart,” 1979), David Ossman & The Firesign Theatre, Art Garfunkel (“Fate for Breakfast,” 1979), Laura Allan, Leah Kunkel, and numerous others. 

Penny studied voice with noted vocal coach, Florence Riggs. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Penny went back to school and earned degrees in Music & Psychology from Antioch University, and then went on to Harvard University to do research in music and psychology eventually earning a Doctorate in Education there. During the same time, she recorded and toured with many performers including: Art Garfunkel, Suzi Quatro, Danny O’Keefe, Yvonne Elliman, Jennifer Warnes, Albert Brooks, The Credibility Gap, Steve Gillette, Donna Summer, and earned a Grammy nomination for her work on Arlo Guthrie’s album The Power of Love. 

In 1990, twenty-two years after her debut album, Penny co-produced her second solo album, All Life is One, which features guest appearances by Danny O’Keefe on vocals and Rick Ruskin (her co-producer) on guitar. In 1993, she released another record, Songs from the Jataka Tales, an album of songs based on 1000-year-old Buddhist stories. In 1997, while living in upstate New York, Penny and Molly Mason collaborated on the song The Unbroken Thread which is included on the CD, The Catskill Collection, a compilation of music inspired by New York’s Catskill Mountains performed by some of the regions finest musicians.

Penny became an in-demand vocal coach and teacher, working with singers to bring out their best. She believed strongly in the musicality of people and felt that everyone could sing. She released a video called You Can Sing! an encouraging and enjoyable lesson to help turn “listeners” into singers. She worked as a composer and vocal instructor based in Cambria, California. From there she oversaw Summersongs songwriting camps, held four times a year, twice in New York and twice in California. 

After a fight with breast cancer, Penny returned with a book and CD called The 8 Voyages of Nep, songs of grieving and healing inspired by her cancer treatments. In 2012, Penny recorded an album of early songs by her life-long friend Jackson Browne. Colors of the Sun: Penny Nichols sings the early songs of Jackson Browne features guest appearances by many of the people who performed with Jackson and Penny in their early days. 

Penny & Mark Rothe

Penny’s final CD is a collection of a dozen songs called Golden State, a recollection of growing up in Southern California. A true California native, she weaves stories and music from the culture that she remembers into a fine tapestry of life’s many colours. It was released in 2015. She was working on another CD at the time of her passing. She died on October 29, 2017 of cancer, at the age of 69.

(Edited from an article by Russ Paris @  Folkworks)

Hugh X. Lewis born 25th December 1930

Hubert Brad Lewis (December 25, 1930 – December 29, 2020), known professionally as Hugh X. Lewis, was an American country music singer born in Yeaddiss, Kentucky. He recorded between 1964 and currently for various labels, and charted fifteen singles on the Hot Country Songs charts. Lewis's debut single, "What I Need Most", peaked at number 21 on this chart. Lewis also wrote eleven songs for Stonewall Jackson including the number one single "B.J. the D.J." 

Hubert Bradley Lewis was born the son of a Church of Christ minister. He grew up in southeast Kentucky in Cumberland and sfter high school, he went to work with the U.S. Steel Corporation's Mine Operations in Lynch, Kentucky and stayed there for about ten years. Though such work might leave one tired and sore, Hugh found the time to perform in weekend shows in the Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia areas - he just knew he would one day end up in Nashville. He eventually worked his way up to the position of foreman at his job in Lynch. 

During the late 50’s,  a radio station in Cincinnati, WLW, held a talent search contest and Hugh won out for two years in a row, which lead to other opportunities. His appearances on the famed Renfro Valley Barn Dance drew encouragement from the legendary John Lair. But what got the momentum going for him was when he won a Pet Milk contest that got him a guest spot on the Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round in Knoxville. He ended up doing frequent appearances on the Barn Dance and sometimes hitch-hiked from Lynch, Kentucky to do those shows. 

During 1963, Hugh decided it was time to move to Nashville and made the move by himself initially. He got himself a job selling advertising space for a magazine during the day and at night, continued to hone his songwriting skills. He spent about two months in a boarding house which he calls the two most miserable months in his life, before he was able to bring his wife Ann and the kids to town in a Ryder truck. He was soon  signed as a staff songwriter with Cedarwood Music, the publishing company that had been co-founded by singer Webb Pierce and Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny a decade prior. 

                             

In 1964, he hit pay dirt as the writer of the No. 1 Stonewall Jackson hit “B.J. the D.J.” Jackson subsequently recorded a half dozen more Lewis tunes, including “Angry Words” (No. 16, 1968) and “Ship in the Bottle” (No. 19, 1969). Carl Smith took the songwriter’s “Take My Ring Off Your Finger” into the top-20 in 1964. Carl Butler & Pearl succeeded with the Lewis tune “Just Thought I’d Let You Know” the following year. Kitty Wells, Ray Pillow, Mac Wiseman, Jimmy C. Newman, George Morgan, Charley Pride, Jimmy Dickens, Lynn Anderson and Jim Ed Brown also recorded songs written or co-written by Hugh X. Lewis. Del Reeves & Bobby Goldsboro sang a duet on his song “I Just Wasted the Rest.” 

Success as a songwriter led to a recording contract with Kapp Records. Lewis never scored a top-20 hit as a singer, but his smooth baritone was notable on a string of country singles. He wrote or co-wrote nine of his 15 charted songs.“What I Need Most” (1965), “Out Where the Ocean Meets the Sky” (Mel Tillis/Fred Burch, 1965), “I’d Better Call the Law on Me” (1966), “You’re So Cold (I’m Turning Blue)” (Harlan Howard/Tony Senn, 1967) and “Evolution and the Bible” (1968) were top-40 entries. “All Heaven Broke Loose” was a top-20 hit in Canada in 1969. His major-label LPs were The Hugh X. Lewis Album (1965), Just Before Dawn (1965), My Kind of Country (1966), Just a Prayer Away (1967) and Country Fever (1968). 

Beginning in 1968, he hosted Hugh X. Lewis Country Club, a syndicated weekly TV show. By 1971, it was being aired in 31 markets. He opened his own nightclub in Printer’s Alley in 1972 and produced the remaining episodes of the show from there. Lewis was also featured in the country B-movies Forty Acre Feud (1966), Gold Guitar (1967) and Cotton Pickin’ Chicken Pickers (1967). 

Hugh X. Lewis retired in 1984, but returned to the music business in 1998 as the "Country Ham, Colonel Hugh X. Lewis He began emphasizing gospel music with the albums God, Home & Country and Stand Up and Be Counted. In 2005, he appeared in the Christian children’s film Summer of Courage. He also became a performing poet, reciting inspirational verse on various radio programs and in churches. In 2006, the Tennessee Senate and House of Representatives passed a resolution designating Lewis as the state’s poet laureate of Christian country music. He was the first person to hold that designation. 

Since 2017 he was hosting a weekly gospel radio show called The Christian Country Store on WSGS and WKIC in Hazard, Kentucky. He also had daily features on the Gospel Radio Network. Lewis  became a member of the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame and was honoured in the Walkway of Stars at the original Country Music Hall of Fame 

 He died from complications of COVID-19 in Nashville, Tennessee, on December 29, 2020, at the age of 90.

(Edited from article by Robert K Oermamn @ Music Row, Hillbilly Music, Baptist & Relector & Wikipedia)