Country singer who was a pioneer of the honky tonk style of music and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984.
He was a telegraph operator for Western Union and played mandolin and guitar at local dances in the 1930s.
His most popular song was "They Took the Stars Out of Heaven," released in 1944.
His father was a sharecropper in the cotton mill town of Post, Texas.
His final album, Influence, featured duets with many popular country artists, including Dolly Parton.
