Conway Twitty

Conway Twitty cut his musician's teeth in the 1950s as a rock 'n' roll singer, but eventually found home in the rootsy, yet accessible, country music that gave him celebrity in the 1970s and 1980s. His deep, rural vocal inflections gave Nashville some of the most amazingly sung ballads of the country pop era. Lyrically ladened with double entendre, Twitty's sensual songs made him the Tom Jones of country music (rhinestone panties, anyone?). Of greater importance was his courageous risk-taking in a city that hardly tolerates experimenting with musical crosses. Twitty's personalized country is a slick hybrid of R&B shuffles and steady rock 'n' roll backbeats soaked in note-bending twang and cascading melodies--all engineered to make women swoon.