Ferlin Husky

Ferlin Husky followed three separate paths during his professional life. His country-pop phase, which carried him to chart prominence in the closing years of the 1950s, remains the most widely recalled, although he also performed honky tonk material under the name Terry Preston and delivered comedy routines as Simon Crum. The Preston and Crum identities stayed secondary to Husky’s main success, yet Crum came close to becoming a familiar figure in his own right. From the late 1950s into the early 1960s he placed a steady run of singles inside the country Top 40, led by the two number one hits “Gone” and “Wings of a Dove,” each of which occupied the top spot for ten weeks. Husky never repeated that level of dominance, but both recordings later entered the country canon as classics.

Raised on a Missouri farm, Husky developed an early fascination with music and learned guitar as a boy. He served in the Merchant Marines during World War II and occasionally entertained shipmates. After the war he worked as a disc jockey in Missouri and then in Bakersfield, California. While in California he adopted the stage name Terry Preston, believing his given name sounded too rural, and began playing honky tonks under that alias. At one engagement, Cliffie Stone, manager for Tennessee Ernie Ford, heard Husky perform and took him on as a client. Stone arranged a 1953 recording contract with Capitol Records, after which Husky immediately returned to using his own name for performances.

His earliest Capitol sides drew little notice. Recognition arrived only when he joined Jean Shepard on the duet “A Dear John Letter,” which reached number one. Husky could not follow the hit with an immediate solo success, though the pair later released the sequel “Forgive Me John” the same year. His first solo chart entry came in 1955 when both “I Feel Better All Over (More Than Anywhere’s Else)” and its flip side “Little Tom” reached the country Top Ten. Around the same period he introduced the comic persona Simon Crum, signed him to a separate Capitol contract, and began issuing records under that name.

Husky maintained a consistent flow of hits through the remainder of the 1950s, peaking in 1957 when “Gone” held number one for ten weeks and crossed over to reach number four on the pop chart. That year he also began acting, appearing first on Kraft Television Theatre and then in the film Mr. Rock & Roll. In 1958 Crum scored a number two hit with “Country Music Is Here to Stay.” Several 1959 releases charted, yet none entered the Top Ten. His largest success arrived in 1960 with the gospel song “Wings of a Dove,” which spent ten weeks at number one and peaked at number 12 pop.

Despite the strong performance of “Wings of a Dove,” Husky struggled to remain on the country charts throughout the 1960s. He continued to draw concert crowds, but no Top Ten singles appeared until “Once” reached number four in 1966. One year later he notched his final Top Ten entry with “Just for You.” Late in the decade he began incorporating the polished production typical of contemporary country-pop, which briefly revived his commercial standing. Minor hits continued to surface until 1975. Heart surgery in 1977 led to a short retirement from the road. During the 1980s and 1990s Husky appeared regularly at the Grand Ole Opry and at Christy Lane’s Theater in Branson, Missouri. Cardiac problems intensified in the 2000s, and he was hospitalized for congestive heart failure and pneumonia in 2009. He died of cardiac arrest at a Nashville-area hospital on March 17, 2011; Ferlin Husky was 85.