Merle Kilgore Songwriter

 Merle Kilgore was a country singer and songwriter, who was also the manager of Hank Williams Junior for a time.  He is buried in Hendersonville, Tennessee near to Johnny and June Carter Cash.   He was born in Oklahoma in 1934, but was brought up in Louisiana.

He met Hank Williams at the Louisiana Hayride, when he was a teenager and became friendly with the family… After attending college, he began a career as a singer but became beter known as a song writer.  He was a distant cousin of the Carter family and through them he met Johnny Cash.  He and June Carter co-wrote “Ring of Fire” which was recorded by Anita Carter, June’s sister but then Johnny Cash recorded it and had a much bigger hit with it.  It was a song about forbidden love, inspired by June’s affair with Johnny…Merle also co-wrote another famous song, Wolverton Mountain which was a big hit for Claude King.

During the 1960s he worked with Johnny Cash, as part of his touring act... When June married Johnny at the end of the 1960s, Merle was his best man.   By the 1980s he had moved more into the business side of country music, and was managing Hank Williams junior and other artists.

He was married with 5 children.  In later years he developed lung cancer and went to Mexico for treatment... where he died of a heart attack…