1959 Stonewall Jackson – Waterloo
You might think that Stonewall Jackson’s first name was a nickname, but it was actually his legal name at birth. He lived in North Carolina for a few years, but after his father died, his mother moved their family to Southern Georgia. He served in the Navy for four years beginning in 1950 and moved to Nashville to pursue a singing career in 1956.
Stonewall signed with Columbia Records and began releasing singles in 1957. The single Life To Go reached number two on the Country chart the next year, and in 1959 he released his first chart-topping single, Waterloo.
The single also crossed over to the pop charts and reached the top ten on the Hot 100.
Stonewall had three more singles reach the Hot 100 in the next year, but none of them made it into the top forty. After that, he only charted on the Country charts. His singles on the Country chart included another number one record, eight top ten singles, and at least two dozen top forty records.
Stonewall recorded a cover version of Lobo’s Me And You And A Dog Named Boo. That record became his final top forty single on the Country chart when it reached #7 in 1971.
Stonewall periodically performed on the Opry until the early twenty-first century, when the show appeared to have no further need of him. He filed an age discrimination lawsuit against the Opry in 2006.
The lawsuit alleged that Opry general manager Pete Fisher had publicly claimed he wanted to eliminate all gray hair in the Opry (including its audience!) and that Stonewall was too old and too country to appear there anymore. An undisclosed financial settlement was forthcoming. More importantly, Stonewall then returned to performing on the Grand Ole Opry stage again and kept appearing periodically until his death at age 89 in 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_Jackson_(musician)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_(Stonewall_Jackson_song)
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