Del Reeves

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BIRTHDAY

July 14, 1933

Sparta, NC

DIED

January 01, 2007

BIOGRAPHY

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As a Grand Ole Opry mainstay during the 1960s, the truck-driving country balladeer Del Reeves became notorious, like his contemporaries Ray Stevens and Roger Miller, for heavily lading his hit singles (such as the 1965 "Girl on the Billboard" and the 1966 "Women Do Funny Things to Me") with off-the-wall comic insights, one-liners, and goofy vocal impersonations. Reeves parlayed his country-music success into a feature-film career, with fleeting onscreen turns (usually as a country hick and yokel), but this only lasted for about four years, from around 1965 until 1969. Film appearances include Del Culpepper in 1965's Forty Acre Feud, Darby Clyde Fenster in 1967's Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers, and the Fisherman in 1969's Burt Reynolds-Ossie Davis Western Sam Whiskey, as well as appearances in the 1965 feature Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar and the 1966 features The Gold Guitar and Las Vegas Hillbillys. Whiskey aside, the majority of these films were critically excoriated, have understandably evaded video issue, and seldom, if ever, crop up on television.
After continued success as a country vocalist during the 1970s and '80s, Reeves moved into the production end of the recording business as the years rolled on, shepherding the careers of Billy Ray Cyrus and others. Reeves faded quietly from view in the 1990s, and died of unspecified causes at age 73, in Nashville, TN, on January 1, 2007.

~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

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