Rick’s Retro Rack And Earl Thomas Conley [VIDEO]

On the "retro rack" today is a singer who at first wanted to be a painter or an actor, but found that music was his calling. During the 80's Earl Thomas Conley would have 17 number one hits.

Conley was born in Portsmouth, Ohio, left home at the age of 14 and lived with his sister. He rejected a scholarship to art school and joined the military. There he fell in love with country music.

By the mid 70's Conley had moved to Nashville and starting writing songs for producer Nelson Larkin's publishing house. He had signed a recording contract with Warner Bros. but none of his songs became hits.

Conley would sign with RCA records in the early 80's and he started having hit song after hit song.

In 1983, Conley had a record setting four number one songs from his album "Don't Make It Easy For Me". It would be the first time any artist from any type of music genre would score four number one hits from the same album.

One of those number one songs was "Holding Her and Loving You".