Died On This Date (November 6, 2007) Hank Thompson / Country Music Legend
themusicsover Hank Thompson
September 3, 1925 – November 6, 2007
Hank Thompson was a honky tonk and western swing band leader who, over a career that spanned an amazing 60+ years, sold more than 60 million albums. After his discharge from the Navy during WWII, Thompson decided to pursue a career making music. In 1952, he released his first #1 hit, “The Wild Side of Life.” The song sat at the top of the country charts for 15 weeks and has been covered by the likes of Waylon Jennings & Jessi Colter, Rod Stewart, Status Quo, Merle Haggard and Hank Williams. In 2000, he released a song entitled “Seven Decades,” a testament to the fact that he made records from the ’40s through the 2000s.” In October of 2007, Thompson was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer. He was 82 when he died of the disease just a couple of weeks later. His final concert had been just a month prior to that.
What You Should Own
Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler was was a Green Beret medic who served for the US Army in Vietnam. In 1966, Sadler co-wrote and sang lead on “Ballad of the Green Berets.” Ironically, the pro-military song became a massive hit during an era mostly associated with the anti war movement. The song sat at the top of the charts for five weeks and sold approximately nine million copies. Sadler later became a published author, writing more than 20 adventure books. On November 6, 1989, Barry Sadler died from a serious gunshot wound he suffered a year earlier. While traveling in Guatamala in 1988, he was shot in the head while in a taxi cab. He laid in a coma for several months and ended up suffering brain damage and was partially paralyzed. The shooting was originally reported as a robbery and never officially solved, but some have claimed it was an assassination attempt by those who believed that Sadler was training the Contras.
Marie Gianini was part of the comedy, dance and vocal duo, the Avon Sisters, who spent many years performing through the Midwest and entertaining troops with the USO. Forming the duo with her sister, Theresa Frisby, perhaps her biggest thrill came when President Franklin Roosevelt called her to thank them for their hard work. Marie Gianini was 85 when she passed away at a care center on November 6, 2009.
No matter who you’ve been told was the earliest to use sampling in there songs, it’s likely that Dickie Goodman isn’t on that list even though he was doing it as far back as 1956. It was that year that he released his first big hit, “The Flying Saucer” that was basically a “man on the streets” interview that included snippets of songs by 
