Biography
Houston was born in Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana. He was a descendant of Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas and Confederate General Robert E. Lee. His godfather was 1920s pop singer Gene Austin, no relation to Stephen F. Austin, another founder of Texas. Like Austin, Houston lived briefly as a youth in a house at the intersection of Marshall and Goodwill streets in Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana.
Houston was one of the earliest artists with National Recording Corporation in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1963, he rose to national stardom with the single "Mountain of Love"; the song, which was different from the tune made famous by composer Harold Dorman, Johnny Rivers, and Charley Pride, rose to number two on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart. Another song, "Livin' in a House Full of Love" (1965) did just as well.
In 1966, Houston recorded his breakthrough secular smash, "Almost Persuaded." This song, which is unrelated to the Philip Paul Bliss hymn of the same title, is the tale of a married man managing to resist a temptress he meets in a tavern. Houston's recording of it quickly rocketed to number one that August, eventually spending nine weeks atop Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart. Ever since "Almost Persuaded" became a country standard, no song has equaled or bettered Houston's feat. However, two country songs have spent eight weeks at No. 1: Lonestar's "Amazed", which topped the chart from July 17 to September 4, 1999; and "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett, from August 9 to September 20 and then October 4, 2003 (in between "Somewhere's" seventh and eighth weeks at No. 1, on September 27, 2003, Dierks Bentley's "What Was I Thinkin'" topped the chart).
Houston was awarded 2 Grammy Awards for Best Country & Western Recording and Best Country & Western Performance, Male in 1967 for "Almost Persuaded".
"Almost Persuaded" began a string of top five Houston singles through 1973, including six more number ones: "With One Exception" and "You Mean the World to Me" (1967); "Have a Little Faith" and "Already It's Heaven" (1968); "Baby, Baby (I Know You're a Lady)" (1970); and 1967's "My Elusive Dreams" duet with Tammy Wynette. In later years, Houston dueted with Barbara Mandrell on several of her early hits, most notably 1970's "After Closing Time" and 1974's "I Love You, I Love You".
Houston's last Top 10 country hit came in 1974 with "Can't You Feel It". Houston died of a brain aneurysm in Bossier City some two weeks before his 58th birthday. He had been residing in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner. He is interred in the Rose-Neath Funeral Home Cemetery in Bossier City. Houston is survived by his only child, David Houston, Jr., who currently resides in Shreveport.
Read more about this topic: David Houston (singer)
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldn’t be. He is too many people, if he’s any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
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“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
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