Before tragedy cut short his path, Mel Street stood out as a gifted hard country vocalist whose deeply felt approach echoed earlier honky-tonk traditions. Born King Malachi Street in Grundy, Virginia, he entered the world in a year listed by most references as 1933, though his relatives maintained it was 1935. As the child of a coal miner, Street made his initial public appearance at sixteen on a radio broadcast. After marrying and starting a family, he spent several years shifting between Ohio towns while employed as an electrician servicing radio transmission towers. In 1960 he began appearing in nightspots around Niagara Falls and at the same time picked up auto-repair skills, prompting a return to West Virginia in 1963 to establish his own body shop. Singing remained a constant pursuit, however, and he eventually secured a weekly half-hour Saturday program on a regional television outlet that aired between 1968 and 1972.
His debut single, “Borrowed Angel,” appeared in 1970 on the modest Tandem imprint run by cable-television executives Jim and Jean Prater. The record attracted scattered airplay and was subsequently picked up by Royal American Records, allowing it to reach the national Top Ten in 1972. Street then joined Metromedia and scored his sole Top Five success with the follow-up, “Lovin’ on the Back Streets,” in 1973.
Now committed to an intensive touring regimen, he switched to GRT Records in 1974 and notched a pair of Top 20 entries with “You Make Me Feel More Like a Man” and “Forbidden Angel.” A further Top Ten placement, “I Met a Friend of Yours Today,” arrived in 1976, after which he moved to the major-label roster of Polydor. Two albums emerged in 1977 and 1978, yielding additional chart singles in “Barbara, Don’t Let Me Be the Last to Know” and “If I Had a Cheating Heart.” A generous new Mercury contract followed, and widespread recognition seemed imminent.
Street had nonetheless long struggled with depression and alcohol dependency; the mounting demands of the road increasingly strained his domestic life and left him progressively less equipped to manage. On 21 October 1978—his birthday—he took his own life. A pair of posthumous singles, “Just Hangin’ On” and “Tonight Let’s Sleep on It Baby,” later appeared on the charts, yet the considerable promise he had shown remained largely unrealized.
