and Bottom Of The Bottle 1965. Folks, I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a couple of Louvin Brothers’ songs ... here we go, the beautiful Almost Persuaded in 1963 ... plus an eerie song given how Ira died, The Wreck On The Highway in 1962. . Thinking back to his early days, in 1965 Ira noticed being on the road was beginning to revive demons such as drinking that had haunted him during his life. With that in mind, before leaving on his last three-gig tour, which he contractually was obligated to do, he told his Mom that upon returning he was going to vacate the music completely to devote the rest of his life to the service of God. With that, he hit the road for what would be the last time.
Stars Who Died In Tragic Accidents [TA] Continued
Notes: 1. Click on ANY TEXT in BLUE ... it is a link to a SONG, VIDEO, PHOTO or INFO 2. Click on each photo to enlarge unless otherwise noted 3. If a video does not load, try refreshing the page
The shows were in the Chestnut Inn in Kansas City, Missouri. Following the shows, Ira, wife Anne, and another couple left Kansas City to return to Alabama. They stopped at an all-night diner at about 3:00 a.m. on Father's Day, Sunday, June 20, 1965, to have a bite, then continued on their way. Interstate 70 was under construction ... traffic was reduced to one lane each way. Ira and Anne were in the backseat ... their friend, Billy Barksdale, was heading east at a high rate of speed. At 4:40 A.M. a truck driven by a drunk driver crossed the line and hit them head-on. Out of the six folks in the two vehicles, four died instantly and Ira and Anne died shortly thereafter. Eerily, just one year before the split and 3 years before Ira died in a car wreck, the Louvin Brothers charted with The Wreck On The Highway 1962.
Local police ruled the drunk driver was at fault.
The Accident
Mini Bio: After her death, Dottie West aka Dorothy Marie Marsh became a Hall of Fame member. She was an excellent country music singer/songwriter. As an aside, she was known to mentor up-and-coming female country artists. Dottie who was born in Tennessee, dove into country music at a young age including furthering her musical knowledge at Tennessee Polytechnic Institute. Temporarily her family moved to Ohio ... at that time, she continued to pursue her musical career with gigs and live appearances. After signing a Starday contract in 1959, Dottie and her family moved to Nashville. Dottie won the first-ever Grammy given to a female country artist with Here Comes My Baby in 1964 ... it was also her first top 10 hit. Several of her written or co-written songs reached the top 10 such as Would You Hold It Against Me, Paper Mansions and Rings of Gold.
Dottie West <> October 11, 1932 – September 4, 1991 <> Car Accident <> Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2018
Dottie
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The career continued to thrive into 1976, in fact, she had a big crossover hit with Country Sunshine in 1973. Hmmm, do you remember the Coca-Cola jingle? In the ’70s Dottie recorded a couple of albums with...
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