Hank Thompson (real name - Henry "Hank" William Thompson) was a country music entertainer whose career spanned seven decades. He sold over 60 million records worldwide. He was born on September 3, 1925 and died on November 6, 2007.

Thompson's musical style, characterized as Honky Tonk Swing, was a mixture of fiddles, electric guitar and steel guitar that featured his distinctive, gravelly baritone vocals.

1952 brought his first no 1 disc, "The Wild Side of Life", which contained the memorable line "I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels" (which inspired the Kitty Wells answer song, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"). Other hits followed in quick succession in the 1950s and 1960s. Although not as prominent in later decades, he has remained an active and respected performer in the field, finding new audiences as a result of the resurgence of a harder-edged sound in country music.

From 1947 to 1965, he recorded for Capitol Records, then joined Warner Bros. Records, where he remained from 1966 through 1967. From 1968 through 1980, he recorded for Dot Records and its successors, ABC Dot and MCA Records. In 2000 he released a new album Six Decades on the Hightone label closer in sound to his older Capitol material, unlike the slicker Nashville Sound that permeated most of his Dot material.

Hank Thompson was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997.

Thompson continued limited touring, mostly in the West and Southwest, until shortly before he became ill. Often, he worked with a reconstituted version of the Brazos Valley Boys that included a few original members.

On November 1, 2007 Hank Thompson canceled the rest of his 2007 tour and retired from singing, two days after being released from a Texas hospital and diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer. He went into hospice care in Fort Worth, Texas. Thompson's last performance was on October 8, 2007 in Waco, Texas, his birthplace. He died a month later from lung cancer, aged 82.

www.hankthompson.com