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Sunday 8 June 2014

Vernon Oxford (b. June 8, 1941, (Rogers, Arkansas)

                                            Vernon Oxford (b. June 8, 1941, (Rogers, Arkansas)


 Oxford was raised in Wichita, Kansas, where his father played old-time fiddle. He began playing professionally in Utah in 1960, mostly playing in the Kansas area in the early 1960s, then relocated to Nashville in 1964. In 1965 he met Harlan Howard, who got him signed to RCA Victor and helped him find material to record. He then released seven singles and one LP, Woman Let Me Sing You a Song; none of them charted, and he was soon dropped from RCA.

His career saw a resurgence in Britain, where he was first rediscovered in the middle of the 1970s. A best-of was issued there in 1974, and RCA signed him again to tour there. His hit singles "Shadows of My Mind", "Redneck (The Redneck National Anthem)", and "A Good Old Fashioned Saturday Night Honky Tonk Barroom Brawl" (U.S. Country No. 55, 1977) reinvigorated his career in America; in Britain, he was well known for "I've Got to Get Peter Off Your Mind" and "Field of Flowers" After a break of several years, he began a career as a gospel singer in 1981.

Eric Heatherly

Eric Heatherly - Painkillers (2012) 
Singer/songwriter Eric Heatherly grew up listening to country, rockabilly, and classic rock artists like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty, and Roy Orbison, whose influences shaped his music while he was still a child. Heatherly began writing songs at eight and was performing by the time he reached his early teens, the Chattanooga native played with numerous bands through his high school and college years. After moving to Nashville, Heatherly made himself a fixture of the local music scene, which led to endorsements with Fender and Takamine guitars, as well as a gig in Shania Twain's band for her appearance on the 1997 CMA Awards Show. He recorded his 2000 debut album, Swimming in Champagne, with famed Nashville producer Keith Stegall. While the album spawned a hit single, "Flowers On The Wall", the album was released just as his label, Mercury Records, underwent a regime change while their parent company was in the midst of a merger. Mercury didn't promote Swimming in Champagne into a commercial success, and the label opted not to release his follow-up album. After leaving Mercury, Dreamworks signed Heatherly in 2003, and scheduled the release of his third album, Sometimes It's Just Your Time, for the fall of that year. However, while promotional copies of the disc were sent out to the press, Dreamworks pulled the album from release at the last moment, and it never received commercial distribution. Frustrated with the major label scene, Heatherly struck out on his own, and recorded his next release, 2005's The Lower East Side of Life, for his own NashVegas label, with distribution through Koch Nashville.