I would like to know if country music artist Webb Pierce is still living.
—Roger S., South Carolina
Pierce, who was one of the biggest country music honky-tonk stars in the 1950s, died in 1991 of pancreatic cancer. He had 88 country hits in the '50s and '60s. Born Aug. 8, 1921 or 1926, depending on the source, he was raised in West Monroe, La. After spending time in the Army during World War II, he moved to Shreveport and started singing on a morning radio show and selling men's clothes for Sears, Roebuck and Co. in the afternoons. He joined KWKH's Saturday night show, Louisiana Hayride, and formed a band with such later legends as Floyd Cramer on piano, Tex Grimsley on fiddle, and singers Faron Young and Teddy and Doyle Wilburn. In 1951, Pierce landed a deal with Decca Records and had his first big hit, Wondering, the next year. Several No. 1 hits followed. Pierce was a Grand Ole Opry member in 1952-55 and rejoined briefly in 1956. His last record to crack the country charts was in 1982—In the Jailhouse Now—a remake with Willie Nelson of one of his biggest hits.
