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The famous tale of Lana Turner being discovered while she was sipping a soda in a drugstore has an even odder musical counterpart. This Rockabilly and Honky-Tonk singer was discovered while he was out in the wilderness catching a fish.
His career was fruitful, despite having one hit banned by the BBC; and in love and death, he followed in the footsteps of an ill-fated Country legend.

(This time, I WILL WIN.)

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Congrats to Trambo for correctly guessing Johnny Horton.

Johnny Horton was the son of an East Texas sharecropping family. A fishing fanatic, he worked in California and Alaska in the fishing industry, singing on the side, before coming home. He led tourists on fishing expeditions in Southeast Texas, and would sing and play guitar for them while in camp. One person on one of his tours in 1951 was a staff member of radio station KWKH, home of the "Louisiana Hayride" show. For the next eight years, Horton would appear regularly on "Hayride."

His early recording career horribly mismanaged, he finally hit paydirt in 1956 with the song "I'm a Honky Tonk Man." This honky-tonk classic was covered over three decades later by Dwight Yoakam, and was a hit for him as well.

At the end of the 1950's, with the Rockabilly sound waning, he turned to more folk-based material. It's from these songs that we know him best. 1959's number one hit "Springtime in Alaska" was followed by his most famous song "Battle of New Orleans." This one went to number one on both the Pop and Country charts, stayed on the charts for a solid year, and won him a Grammy. As an amusing sidenote, it was banned by the BBC because of the words "the bloody British." In 2001 it won the Grammy Hall of Fame award and was named a Song of the Century.

On November 4, 1960, while heading back to Louisiana after an appearance at the Skyline Club in Austin, Horton was killed when the car he was driving was hit head-on by a drunk driver. The Skyline Club was also the location of Hank Williams' final performance -- Williams wouldn't make it to his next one, dying in the backseat of his car on the way to a show in Canton, Ohio. For Horton's widow, it was all too much a case of deja vu. She was Billie Jean Jones, better known as the widow of Hank Williams.

His fame hard-won, Johnny Horton was still having hits several years after he was already gone.

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