Vernon Oxford (June 8, 1941 – August 18, 2023) was an American country music singer and guitarist with unlucky timing, coming up during an era when traditional country simply wasn't counting for much on the charts. However, he was able to find a different route to success, touring the U.K. extensively to capitalize on his surprising popularity there.
Vernon Oxford was born near Rogers, a small township in Benton County, Arkansas, to Mr. & Mrs. Walter Vernon and was one of seven children. His childhood was spent in rural surroundings. His school was nothing more than a wooden shack. His leisure time was taken up with music, his father was a fine fiddler, and the whole family would join in during the evening singing and playing the old mountain songs. Just before Vernon reached his teens his family moved from the Ozarks to Wichita, Kansas. Here Vernon joined the local church choir and first began taking an interest in the guitar and fiddle. At first he became more expert on the fiddle and entered several local fiddle contests including the famous Cowtown contest and the Kansas State Championship. He then progressed to singing and formed his own group and played throughout the mid-west at clubs, honky-tonks and other small places of entertainment.
His first professional gig came in 1960 at a Utah club, and he spent the next several years playing clubs and dances around Kansas. In 1964, he moved to Nashville to try his luck in the business and did the usual round of record companies and music publishing firms. He tried RCA and was turned down; he called in at United Artists and got the same response. At the time no one was interested in somebody who could sing real country music. He became acquainted with Harlan Howard, a successful Nashville writer who specialised in writing straight-forward country songs.
Howard’s songs and Oxford’s voice were tailor-made for each other, what was needed was just the right song to appeal to one of the record companies. More audition tapes were made. Harlan Howard made it his personal responsibility to get Vernon Oxford started. He was knocked out by his natural voice and the great feeling he had for the music. Eventually RCA were impressed with one of the audition tapes that Vernon Oxford had submitted, and in December, 1965 Vernon Oxford cut his first commercial session for RCA Victor. The result was a small hit with Harlan Howard’s Woman Let Me Sing You A Song, but unfortunately Vernon Oxford didn’t catch on, even though everyone raved about his great ‘country’ voice.
Most of his recordings were very country, and though he recorded several up-beat numbers, he was better on slow weepers with stand-outs being Touch Of God’s Hand, This Woman Is Mine, Forgetfullness For Sale and Field of Flowers. Though he signed a five-year contract with RCA Victor in 1965, they only released seven singles and one album, all of which are sadly deleted. After leaving Victor he signed with the Stop label, but again success eluded him, it seems that nowadays you can be too country, even for Nashville.
While traditional country fans applauded his work, he never managed to hit the charts, and RCA dropped him. He recorded briefly for the smaller Stop label but caught a break when British audiences discovered him as a fine traditional-style artist who'd slipped through the cracks of American popular taste. RCA issued a retrospective of his work in Britain in 1974, re-signed Oxford, and sent him on a tour. Oxford scored his first chart single in America with "Shadows of My Mind" and had his biggest hit with "Redneck (The Redneck National Anthem)"; a few more singles charted in America, and Oxford also scored some British hits with the likes of "I've Got to Get Peter off Your Mind" and "Field of Flowers." He also recorded a comedy duet with Jim Ed Brown, "Mowing The Lawn".
He toured actively through 1977 then after a break of several years in 1981, he began a career as a born-again Christian dedicated to gospel music. As an actor, Oxford appeared in several films including The Thing Called Love starring River Phoenix, and Coal Miner's Daughter, a 1980 film about American singer Loretta Lynn, who was portrayed by actress Sissy Spacek.
Mostly as an independent artist, Oxford continued to record new material. Oxford's classic recordings have been reissued by numerous labels, including a comprehensive box set from Bear Family Records, and some compilations from Westside UK and the Morello label, which is a division of UK-based Cherry Red Records. In his later years Vernon suffered from dementia and Parkinson's disease and died on August 18, 2023 in a Nashville hospice. He was 82.
(Edited from Alan Cackett article, AllMusic & Wikipedia)
