RIP: Eddy Arnold, Paul Davis

Two artists associated with country music died recently. The bigger of the two, Eddy Arnold, is credited by Billboard magazine as the most successful country artist of all time. That's because he had such a long run of hit singles over a career dating back to the mid 1940s, up through his peak years in the 60s when he embodied the Nashville Sound. He'd ditched the fiddles and country accents and applied his smooth tenor to pop songs with strings and lush harmony vocals that had come to define country in the 60s.

His reign was before my interest in country music began but I have a couple of his CDs. A wire obit had late singer/TV personality's Dinah Shore's description of his voice and it intrigued me: "Like warm butter and syrup being poured over wonderful buttermilk pancakes,'' she had said.

I can't describe that voice any better. His rich, thick and sweet voice was impressive. He recorded his final album, his 100th, in 2005 at the age of 87. Even at that age, his vocals on the ballad-oriented All These Years Ago had warmth and control. He certainly hadn't suffered the type of vocal decline that plagued the late Frank Sinatra in his latter years or the frayed voice fellow octogenarian Tony Bennett has now.

The other singer who died was Paul Davis, at 60 of a heart attack. He didn't have Arnold's cache but I was more familiar with some of his music since it was popular in the 70s and 80s. By the 80s I had moved on from his music as I didn't care for the sugary Cool Night, Sweet Life or '65 Love Affair and wasn't interested in venturing into his hit country duets with Marie Osmond. But his 1978 classic, I Go Crazy, was a staple of my teen years. That song spent 40 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, that was a chart record for longevity then. Every morning, that beautiful pop tune, with its tinkling piano fills, popped onto WQAM on our AM car radio at 5 a.m. while we were on the MacArthur Causeway heading toward the University of Miami for swim practice. To this day, if I hear that track I'm catapulted back to that early morn' drive to the pool for lap after lap with fellow Hurricane Swim Club teammates. Gonna have to give that tune a play on the iPod.