As one of the best-known honky tonkers to appear in the wake of Hank Williams's death, Faron Young was a popular presence on Nashville's music scene for more than four decades. The Singing Sheriff produced a string of Top Ten hits, placed over eighty songs on the country music charts, and founded the long-running country music periodical Music City News in 1963. Flamboyant, impulsive, and generous, he helped and encouraged a new generation of talented songwriter-performers that included Willie Nelson and Bill Anderson. In 2000, four years after his untimely death, Faron was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Presenting the first detailed portrayal of this lively and unpredictable country music star, Diane Diekman masterfully draws on extensive interviews with Young's family, band members, and colleagues. Impeccably researched, Diekman's narrative also weaves anecdotes from Louisiana Hayride and other old radio shows with ones from Young's business associates, including Ralph Emery. Her unique insider's look into Young's career adds to an understanding of the burgeoning country music entertainment industry during the key years from 1950 to 1980, when the music expanded beyond its original rural roots and blossomed into a national (ultimately, international) enterprise. Echoing Young's characteristic ability to entertain and surprise fans, Diekman combines an account of his public career with a revealing, intimate portrait of his personal life.
| Contents ®FL¯ Preface 1. Faron Young—A Study in Contrasts 2. A Shreveport Beginning 3. On To Nashville 4. ®MDUL¯Goin' Steady®MDNM¯—And into the Army 5. The Young Sheriff—Living Fast and Loving Hard 6. Country Music on Life Support 7. Legends in the Making 8. ®MDUL¯Hello Walls,®MDNM¯ Goodbye Capitol Records 9. Family Matters 10. Wings and Wheels 11. ®MDUL¯Music City News®MDNM¯ 12. Making Music in the 1960s 13. Faron and Friends 14. Business on Music Row 15. A Drunk, Not an Alcoholic 16. From Severed Tongue to Number One 17. "This Little Girl of Mine" 18. The Sheriff and His Deputies 19. There He Was in Tulsa 20. Giving Hilda a Break 21. After the Top Tens 22. D-I-V-O-R-C-E 23. Closing out a Career 24. Last Call Epilogue Acknowledgments Appendix: Timeline of Country Deputies Notes Index |"Diekman has done such a thorough job that there is unlikely ever to be another Faron Young biography to compete with it. She has uncovered a great deal of information that will be news to even Faron Young's most passionate fans and friends."—Paul Kingsbury, editor of The Encyclopedia of Country Music and Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Country Music in America
"I've never read a book on someone in the music business that inspired so many different feelings—laughter, sadness, pity, and even crying!" —Glenn Sutton, member of Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame
"Live Fast, Love Hard, a sobering account of the Singing Sheriff's roller-coaster life that ended with his 1996 suicide, tells the tale of two Youngs: one, a talented, flamboyant performer and charitable man who helped the community and struggling songwriters like Willie Nelson and Bill Anderson, and who helped country music by founding the long-running periodical Music City News; the other, a raging alcoholic and jealous husband with an explosive temper, whose addiction and poor self image . . . led him to abuse and cheat on his wife, and verbally abuse his children, band members, and friends when he was drinking. . . . Diane Diekman . . . provides readers a rare glimpse inside the tumultuous life of this talented and troubled...
