Biography
Leonard Raymond Sipes, 28 September 1930, Bethany, Oklahoma, USA, d. 14 March 2000, Ashland City, Tennessee, USA. Collins reflected upon his childhood in his song about being raised on a farm, ‘The Roots Of My Raising’, a US country number 1 for Merle Haggard in 1976. As a young man Collins was an avid follower of Jimmie Rodgers and, for a while, he dated the singer Wanda Jackson (although, contrary to some reports, it was the lesser-known Wanda Shahan that Collins later married). On moving to Bakersfield, California, Ferlin Husky named him after a drink, Tom Collins, and, like Buck Owens, he played on his Capitol Records recordings of the mid-50s. Collins stated he was ‘singing as high as I could - Webb Pierce was in fashion’ and his songs were largely light-hearted, mildly suggestive narratives about courting, such as his first records, ‘You Gotta Have A License’, ‘You Better Not Do That’ (a number 2 hit in 1954),...
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