To have devised one enduringly successful song may be no more than serendipity, to have written two implies craft, but to come up, like the country singer Don Gibson, who has died aged 75, with three hugely popular compositions suggests a touch of genius.
"I consider myself a songwriter who sings rather than a singer who writes songs," Gibson once said, and he could justify his claim in 10 words: Sweet Dreams, Oh Lonesome Me, I Can't Stop Loving You. The first two titles may be best known by lovers of country music, but I Can't Stop Loving You is an indisputable standard of popular song, having been recorded more than 700 times, most famously by Ray Charles.
His own 1957 recording of Oh Lonesome Me, produced by Chet Atkins, was one of the first products of what came to be called the Nashville Sound: a strategy of making country music more widely acceptable.
Atkins and his fellow producer Owen Bradley were the planners behind this subversion, Gibson, Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline its most effective agents. Further hits such as Blue Blue Day (1958), Sea Of Heartbreak (1961) and Lonesome Number One (1962) confirmed Gibson's skill as a crossover artist.
He was born in Shelby, North Carolina, took up the guitar in his teens, and first sang on the local radio station with a group called the Sons of the Soil. What established him was writing Sweet Dreams, a hit in 1956 for Faron Young but now inseparably linked with the name of Patsy Cline, who recorded it seven years later.
Gibson went on writing and recording throughout the 1960s and into the 70s, despite having to deal with drug addiction and other problems. He is survived by his wife Barbara.
Donald Eugene Gibson: born April 3rd, 1928; died November 17th, 2003.