JIM REEVES IN MEMORIAM

Jim Reeve was one of the best of the "Nashville Sound" style country and western singer. His widespread was not only in the United States but in Britain, India, Scandinavia, and South Africa. He was born in 1923 in Panola County, Texas. After college he began to pursue a professional career in baseball, but was sideline by an injury to his leg while a pitcher with the Houston Buffaloes. For a brief period of his life he became a full radio announcer. He began his recording career in 1945 and also composed his own song. The peak of his carrer came up in the late 1959 to early 1960 with the success of the single "He'll have to go." Which reached number 2 in the US hit record charts and number 12 in British, ultimately reaching 3 million in sales. After his success he made successful tour of the US, Scandinavia, and South Africa where he starred in a film, Kimberley Jim(1963) (released in the U.S in 1965) and recorded songs in Afrikaans local language. Jim was a well know singer with the velvet voice and the gentlemanly manner. Jim had been planning more tours and television appearances at the time the tragedy. His Beechcraft Deboniar aircraft went down in bad weather on July 31, 1964, in Hendersonville, Tennessee, near Nashville, he died with his business manager. Mary Reeves, Jim widow kept all her late husband recording unreleased after his death in backlog and had them release little by little which yielded a great success over the years that younger executives in the record business need to be reminded that Jim has been long gone.