Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

For this week’s Classic Americana pick, we’re remembering the late singer-songwriter Earl Thomas Conley.

Born on October 17, 1941, in Portsmouth, Ohio, Conley was a prolific country artist, who, in the 1980s and ‘90s, released 30 singles that landed in Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, with 18 of them going to No. 1. Conley’s soulful voice, heartfelt lyrics, thoughtful arrangements and an unrelenting work ethic were the anchors of Conley’s successful career.

The early ‘80s were a particular heyday for Conley, and listening back to some of his songs from that era, some of them — like “Angel in Disguise,” for example  — we’d today think of as sounding like yacht rock.

That song appears on Conley’s 1983 album Don’t Make It Easy For Me. The album’s lead single is “Your Love’s on the Line,” which Conley co-wrote with his frequent collaborator, Nashville artist Randy Scruggs — and if that surname sounds familiar to you, it’s because Randy Scruggs is the son of pioneering banjo player Earl Scruggs.

But getting back to Earl Thomas Conley, the song “Your Love’s on the Line” spent 13 weeks in the country singles chart, including a week at No. 1. It’s our Classic Americana pick this week on Radio Heartland.

In all, four songs from Don’t Make It Easy For Me went to No. 1 in the country charts — marking the first time an artist in any genre achieved that feat. Michael Jackson would equal that benchmark in 1988 with his album Bad — and Conley repeated the four No. 1’s from one album that same year with his album The Heart of It All.

Conley recorded duets with such artists as Anita Pointer and Emmylou Harris, and worked with songwriters Scruggs, John Hiatt and many others. Given his duet with Pointer, Conley became one of few country artists to perform live on TV’s Soul Train.

Eventually Conley’s relentlessness got the better of him, and he stepped away from music for a number of years in the 1990s, eventually returning to writing and performing in 1998 and the years that followed. Among Conley’s friends during the latter part of his career was musician and TV personality Blake Shelton.

Conley died in 2019 at age 77.

External Links

Earl Thomas Conley – Discogs page