'The Yodeling King,' Don Winters, dies
By LAURA SEWELL
For The Tennessean
Country music singer Don Winters, 73, known to fans as ''The Yodeling King,'' died yesterday at
his home in Nolensville after a yearlong battle with liver cancer.
Born in Tampa, Fla., and raised in southern Georgia, Mr. Winters began his musical career with
his father's band, Pop Winters and the Southern Strollers, in the late 1940s.
He moved to Nashville in the 1950s to launch his solo career, recording on RCA and Decca Records
labels. He showed up on the Billboard charts with songs Too Many Times and Shake Hands with a
Loser.
In 1960, country music legend Marty Robbins asked Mr. Winters to join his band, a move that
launched a lifelong friendship between the two entertainers. Together they serenaded audiences,
along with Bobby Sykes, as the Marty Robbins Trio. Mr. Winters and Robbins collaborated until
Robbins' death in 1982.
Mr. Winters' sons, Donnie and Dennis, represent the third generation in the Winters family
musical legacy, with their recording career as The Winters Brothers.
Robert Oermann, a columnist at Music Row Magazine and an editor at large at Country Music
Magazine, met Winters in the early 1980s. He wrote about Mr. Winters several times.
''I knew him as one of the greatest singers I've ever heard,'' Oermann said. ''Don was one of
those great yodelers.''
The family will receive visitors at Woodbine Funeral Home's Hickory Chapel, 5852 Nolensville
Pike, from 2-8 p.m. today and tomorrow.
Services, to be officiated by the Rev. Ed Alberts, will be at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Holy Family
Catholic Church, 9100 Crockett Road.
Burial will be in Nolensville Cemetery.
Survivors, in addition to his two sons, include another son, Jason Winters, Nolensville; two
daughters, June Edwards, Nashville, and Jackie Williams, Chapel Hill, Tenn.; two sisters, Dora
Hoff of Punta Gorda, Fla., and Mary Tucker of Rome, Ga.; 13 grandchildren, and nine great-
grandchildren.
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