Opry star “Gentleman Jim” Reeves had more than 50 songs on the Billboard country charts, and 11 No. 1 hits. He was beloved for this velvety baritone and his heartfelt songs that resonated from Nashville to India, making him one of the genre’s first international stars.
On this day, July 31, in 1964, storm clouds moved in over Brentwood, Tennessee — and country music. Reeves got disoriented and piloted his single-engine Beechcraft Debonair nose-first into the ground.
The singer and his longtime manager and pianist, Dean Manuel, died in the plane crash.
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Reeves was 40 years old.
The accident happened near fellow Opry star Marty Robbins’ home. The singer heard the distinct sound of a plane engine and then a loud thud. He had no idea his friend was the pilot. When he heard of the accident, Robbins notified authorities of the approximate wreckage site.
The Natchitoches Parish Journal reported a witness recalled Robbins “heard a loud noise and ran inside and told his wife, ‘Someone’s just been killed out there.’”
“Someone’s Just Been Killed”
Reeves’ hits include his 14-week No. 1 international smash “He’ll Have to Go,” “Four Walls,” “Welcome to My World,” “Am I Losing You,” and “I Guess I’m Crazy.”
“He was a mellow, romantic, smooth singer who pronounced his words where you could understand them,” Jim Ed Brown said. “(Jim) knew how to make every word mean something. He had a lot of heart and put that feeling into his songs.”
But at 4:51 p.m. on July 31, 1964, the sky turned dark, and Reeves, with his famous voice, inadvertently piloted himself and his friend into the heart of the storm.
Reports indicate he appeared disoriented, lost airspeed, and pulled back too sharply on the controls, which led to the fatal stall-spin. At that altitude, recovery was impossible. Reeves and his Beechcraft Debonair spiraled down and vanished into the trees just north of Franklin Road. Investigators concluded that Reeves suffered spatial disorientation or “pilot vertigo.”
Jim Reeves Suffered “Pilot Vertigo”
Per audio controller recordings, the crash occurred only about a minute after entering the storm.
According to The Tennessean, fellow country stars Chet Atkins, Ernest Tubb, and Eddy Arnold joined more than 700 other people searching for Reeves. They combed the woods for two days before a civil defense team located the wreckage buried nose-first in the ground in the wooded terrain just east of Interstate 65 and southwest of Nashville International Airport.
“We searched and searched,” Arnold said. “My office is within a half a mile of where his plane went down. I was in a helicopter looking for him. I arrived within a half‑hour of when they found him.”
Reeves and Manuel were returning home to Nashville from a business trip to Batesville, Arkansas, after finalizing a real estate deal. Radio stations announced the singer’s death on the afternoon of August 2, 1964.
“Immediately after … hundreds of spectators gathered at the scene, blocking Franklin Road traffic,” Tennessean reporters Jerry Thompson and Frank Sutherland wrote on August 3, 1964.
Country music’s elite voted to induct Reeves into the Country Music Hall of Fame three years later.
Jim Reeves’ Early Years
He was born August 20, 1923, in Panola County, Texas. The singer was the youngest of nine children. His father died when he was a baby, and his older brothers were forced to leave school to help support the family. He grew up fascinated by music and was singing and playing guitar at local dances by the time he was 12 years old.
Reeves won a baseball scholarship to the University of Texas at Austin, then quit to volunteer for military service in World War II. He became a welder after failing his physical exam. He played minor-league baseball in several states and worked as a salesman between seasons. A leg injury ended his baseball career in 1947, which pushed him into a job as a radio announcer in East Texas. He recorded his first song about two years later.
Brown told Country Weekly: “Jim’s bigger in death than he was in real life. His music could outlive us all. He was one of the greatest song stylists I’ve ever known. He was a charming person. (Jim) loved people, and he had a lot of character. He worked hard to make other people successful along with him.”
(Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
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