“Any Time” is a country song written by Herbert “Happy” Lawson. The song was published in 1921 and first recorded by Emmett Miller for OKeh Records in 1924. Accompanying himself on ukulele, Lawson recorded his own version for Gennett Re released a version in 1948 that reached #1 on the U.S. country chart and #17 on the U.S. pop chart. Eddy Arnold released a version in 1948 that reached #1 on the U.S. country chart and #17 on the U.S. pop chart.
This has been Eddy Arnold week. Richard Edward Arnold (May 15, 1918 – May 8, 2008) was an American country music singer who performed for six decades. He sold more than 85 million records. A member of the Grand Ole Opry (beginning 1943) and the Country Music Hall of Fame (beginning 1966), Arnold ranked 22nd on Country Music Television’s 2003 list of “The 40 Greatest Men of Country Music.” Arnold was born on May 15, 1918, on a farm near Henderson, Tennessee. His father, a sharecropper, played the fiddle, while his mother played guitar. Arnold’s father died when he was just 11, forcing him to leave school and begin helping on the family farm. This led to him later gaining his nickname—the Tennessee Plowboy. Arnold attended Pinson High School in Pinson, Tennessee, where he played guitar for school functions and events. He quit before graduation to help with the farm work, but continued performing, often arriving on a mule with his guitar hung on his back. Arnold also worked part-time as an assistant at a mortuary.
In 1944, Arnold signed a contract with RCA Victor, and with manager Colonel Tom Parker, who would later manage Elvis Presley. Arnold’s first single was little noticed, but the next, “Each Minute Seems a Million Years”, scored number five on the country charts in 1945. Its success began a decade of unprecedented chart performance; Arnold’s next 57 singles all ranked in the top 10, including 19 number-one successes. In 1946, Arnold scored his first major success with “That’s How Much I Love You”. In 1948, he had five successful songs on the charts simultaneously.
Arnold began working for television in the early 1950s, hosting The Eddy Arnold Show. The summer program was broadcast successively by all three television networks, replacing the Perry Como and Dinah Shore programs. He also performed as a guest and a guest host on the ABC-TV show Ozark Jubilee from 1955 to 1960. Arnold featured in the syndicated Eddy Arnold Time from 1955 to 1957. From 1960 to 1961, he hosted NBC-TV’s Today on the Farm.
With the rise of rock and roll in the mid 1950s, Arnold’s record sales began to decline, though fellow RCA Victor country recording artist Jim Reeves found a greater audience with popular-sounding string-laced arrangements. Arnold annoyed many in the country music establishment by recording with Hugo Winterhalter and his Orchestra at the RCA Victor studios in New York. Winterhalter’s pop-oriented arrangements of “The Cattle Call” and “The Richest Man (in the World)”, however, helped to expand Arnold’s appeal beyond its country music base.
Arnold embarked on a second career that brought his music to a more diverse audience. In the summer of 1965, he had his first number-one country song in 10 years, “What’s He Doing in My World” and struck gold again six months later with the song that became his most well-known, “Make the World Go Away”, accompanied by pianist Floyd Cramer on piano and featuring the Anita Kerr Singers. As a result, Arnold’s rendition became an international success. “Make The World Go Away” became his only top ten pop hit.
Bill Walker’s orchestra arrangements provided the lush background for 16 continuous successes sung by Arnold in the late 1960s. Arnold performed with symphony orchestras in New York City, Las Vegas, and Hollywood. He performed in Carnegie Hall for two concerts, and in the Coconut Grove in Las Vegas. In 1966, Arnold was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the youngest performer to receive the honor. The following year, Arnold was voted the first-ever awarded Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year. Two years later, he released an autobiography named It’s A Long Way From Chester County.
By 1992, he had sold nearly 85 million records, and had a total of 145 weeks of number-one songs, more than any other singer.
In 1996, RCA issued an album of Arnold’s main successes since 1944 as part of its ‘Essential’ series. Arnold, then 76 years old, retired from active singing, though he still performed occasionally. On May 16, 1998, the day after his 80th birthday, he announced his final retirement during a concert at the Hotel Orleans in Las Vegas. That same year, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences inducted the recording of “Make The World Go Away” into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2000, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 2005, Arnold received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy,[20] and later that year, released a final album for RCA entitled After All These Years. Arnold died from natural causes on May 8, 2008