Vern Gosdin

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This site is managed by Kimber Sparks, and was created with Vern Gosdin sitting right beside me, while visiting me in Australia in March/April 2007.



As country music swung back toward traditional styles in the 1980's, an inheritor of the soulful honky tonk style of Lefty Frizzell and Merle Haggard rose to the top of the business and notched hit after barroom hit. Sometimes he was known simply as "The Voice." Born in Woodland, AL, Vern Gosdin idolized the Louvin Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys as a young man and sang in a gospel quartet called the Gosdin Brothers. When he was in his late teens, his family moved to Birmingham and began hosting the Gosdin Family Gospel Show on the local radio station. Gosdin and his brother, Rex, movVern Gosdin & Brothersed to Long Beach, CA in 1961. They began performing bluegrass music in the milieu that gave birth to country-rock, joining a group called the Golden State Boys that evolved into the Hillmen, featuring future Byrds member Chris Hillman. Vern and Rex teamed up to sing country music as the Gosdin Brothers once again, had a Top 40 country hit in 1967 with "Hangin' On," and opened for the Byrds on occasion. Gosdin moved to Atlanta in 1972, raising a family and running a retail shop. But he never gave up on music completely. He performed at local clubs and began to gravitate toward Nashville, where Emmylou Harris, a friend of Gosdin's from his California days, was laying the foundation for a neo-traditionalist style of country music. Around 1976 Gosdin and Harris cut a demo single consisting of "Hangin' On" backed with a newly written song, "Yesterday's Gone." The Vern Gosdin demo got Gosdin signed to the Elektra label, and both songs cracked the country Top 20. In the late '70's, he notched several major hits, including "Till the End" (with Janie Fricke), "Mother Country Music," and a remake of the Association's "Never My Love." In 1980, after the demise of Elektra's country division, Gosdin quickly moved through several contracts and landed with the independent Nashville label Compleat. He made the Top Ten consistently in the early '80's, really hitting his stride when he teamed with Max D. Barnes as a songwriting collaborator. The pair specialized in songs of cheating and barroom romance, often delivering an over-the-top emotionalism that got Gosdin compared to the ultimate legend of honky tonk vocals, George Jones. In 1983, Gosdin had two Top Five hits -- "If You're Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right)" and "Way Down Deep." The following year he had his first number-one single with "I Can Tell by the Way You Dance (You're Gonna Love Me Tonight)" and had two additional Top Ten hits "There is A Season" was picked by Los Angeles Times as 1984 "Best Country Music Album of the Year." His career hit a lull in the mid-'80's, but in 1987, with the traditionalist movement in full swing and Warner Bros. artist Randy Travis roosting at the top of the charts, he was tapped by the Columbia label. He bounced back into the Top Ten that year with the tortured "Do You Believe Me Now," and in 1988 he hit number one again with the perennially popular Ernest Tubb tribute "Set 'Em Up Joe." Gosdin's "Chiseled In Stone," co-written with Barnes, won the Country Music Association's Song of the Year award in 1989. His 1989 album "Alone" was a rarity: a concept album in a traditional country style. It chronicled the dissolution of Gosdin's marriage. Vern Gosdin is truly one of country music's true living legends. His spine tingling harmony and honest, heartfelt voice have been an integral part of country music for over thirty years. Gosdin who has the ability to lace his songs with humor or heart-wrenching sadness can go from one end of the spectrum to the other over a course of an album. In 2003 "Chiseled In Stone" was named number sixty-nine in the top hundred songs in country music. In 2004, "Set 'Em Up Joe" was named number twenty-four of the forty greatest drinking songs of country music. in September 2004, "If You're Gonna Do Me Wrong (Do It Right)" was named number twenty-eight of forty Done Me Wrong Songs by CMT. After returning from Costa Rica in September 2004, Vern and Merle Haggard entertained a sellout audience at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. In 2005, Vern was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and the Alabama Country and Gospel Music Association. This induction was for Lifetime Achievement Award and Best Album - "Back In The Swing of Things." Vern currently lives in Nashville near the Grand Ole Opry. Vern enjoys spending time with his true friends, including riding around Nashville in his Lexus with his partner in crime, Robert Cunningham!