“ARE YOU READY, EDDY”? – By Des Kelly

Richard Edward “Eddy” Arnold was born on the 15th of May, 1918 in Henderson Tennessee, and died, just a week before his 90th birthday, on the 8th of May, 2008, in Nashville, where he made a huge name for himself, as, not only “The Tennessee Ploughboy”, but also the innovator of the “Nashville-Sound” of the late 1950’s.

He performed for 6 decades, scoring no less than 147 songs on the Billboard Country Charts, at the time, a record only broken by “The Possum” George Jones, who scored 143 singles that hit the “top 40” on the same Charts, with no less than 13 of them reaching the top of the ladder.

Eddy Arnold was another favourite Country Singer of thousands of people around the World, a mghty effort, taking into consideration that even without the internet publicity that was afforded the later Country Stars, like George Jones, etc., he played his guitar and sang in his own inimitable style, songs that were also regularly heard on the Commercial Service of Radio Ceylon, in the good old days.

Are you ready, Eddy ?, here you go again, this time, for the listening pleasure of many thousands of eLanka members, with songs that are favourites of mine, for a start. Rest in peace, now, and thank you for singing beautiful songs that will remain firmly in the memory of your avid fans.