Carl Milton Smith (March 15, 1927 – January 16, 2010) was an American country singer.
Known as "Mister Country", he was one of the genre's most successful male artists during the 1950s, scoring 30 top-10 Billboard hits (21 of which were consecutive). Smith's success continued well into the 1970s, when he had a charting single every year but one. In 1952, Smith married June Carter, with whom he had daughter Carlene; the couple divorced in 1956. His eldest daughter Carlene was the stepdaughter of fellow country singer Johnny Cash, who was subsequently married to his ex-wife June Carter. He later married Goldie Hill, and they had three children together. In 2003, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. According to the Hollywood Walk of Fame website, he was a "drinking companion" to Johnny Cash, his daughter's stepfather.
Smith was born in Maynardville, Tennessee, in 1927 (the same town in which fellow country icon Roy Acuff had been born),and started to aspire to a musical career after hearing the Grand Ole Opry on the radio. He sold seed to pay for guitar lessons as a teenager.
At age 15, he started performing in a band called Kitty Dibble and Her Dude Ranch Ranglers. By age 17, he had learned to play the string bass and spent his summer vacation working at WROL-AM in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he performed on Cas Walker's radio show.
In 1956, Smith and June Carter divorced.
In 1957, he appeared in the movies The Badge of Marshal Brennan and Buffalo Gun, and married country music singer Goldie Hill, best known for the number-one hit "I Let the Stars Get In My Eyes".
Goldie retired from the music business. By the late 1950s, Smith's success began to dwindle on the country chart, and soon his string of top-10 hits began to dwindle.
By the 1960s, Smith's success as a country singer began to slow. His top-20 hits included "Air Mail To Heaven" in 1962 and "Take My Ring Off Your Finger" in 1964. His biggest hit of the decade was "Deep Water" in 1967, which peaked at number 10 and became his first top 10 in eight years (and his final top-10 appearance). In 1961, he was one of five rotating hosts on the NBC television series Five Star Jubilee. He also hosted Carl Smith's Country Music Hall in Canada, a series syndicated in the United States. Smith appeared on The Jimmy Dean Show on April 9, 1964.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Smith incorporated more Western swing into much of his recorded material. He remained with Columbia Records for almost 25 years, leaving in 1975 to sign with Hickory Records. By this time, his singles were barely making the charts.
He appeared in the Hawaii Five-O episode, "Man on Fire", first aired on October 21, 1976.
Due to his real estate and song publishing investments, he decided to retire from the music business in the late 1970s to concentrate on his second passion, raising cutting horses, but in 1983, he recorded an album for the Gusto label. In 2003, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
