Biography
30 January 1934, Heber Springs, Arkansas, USA, d. 16 August 2004, Drasco, Arkansas, USA. In 1937 Endsley was disabled by polio, which confined him to a wheelchair for life. Between 1946 and 1947, he was sent to the cruelly titled Crippled Children’s Hospital in Memphis, where he became interested in country music after listening to artists such as Wayne Raney and the Delmore Brothers on the radio, and he learned to play guitar. He returned to Drasco and graduated from Concord High School in 1954, undecided whether he should seek a career in radio or become a teacher. He worked on KCON Conway and soon became a regular on Wayne Raney’s show on KWCB Searcy. By this time, Endsley, influenced by the songwriting of Hank Williams, had already begun to write songs himself. It was on Raney’s show that he first sang a song that he had originally copyrighted as ‘I’ve Never Felt More Like Singing The Blues’. When the song attracted local...
Read the Full Biography of Melvin Endsley
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