Country singer Frankie Miller, who wrote Black Land Farmer, has died at 95

Frankie Miller, the Texas country singer who wrote and first recorded Black Land Farmer, has died at 95. MusicRow reported the death on Aug. 31, citing Tracy Pitcox, president of Heart of Texas Records, who shared the news.

Miller was born in East Texas in 1931, played football as a teenager, and formed a band called The Drifting Texans before signing with Gilt Edge Records, a 4-Star subsidiary in Houston. His 1951 sides for the label went nowhere. He served in the Army during the Korean War and earned a Bronze Star, signed with Columbia Records in 1954, and joined the cast of Fort Worth's Cowtown Hoedown later that decade.

The run that made him came with Nashville's Starday Records. The label issued his self-penned Black Land Farmer in 1959 and it climbed to No. 5 on the country chart, followed by another top-10 hit in Family Man. Merle Kilgore's Baby Rocked Her Dolly reached No. 15 for him in 1960, the year Cash Box named him Most Promising Male Country Singer, and he joined the cast of The Louisiana Hayride on KWKH in Shreveport. Renewed airplay in Texas and Michigan put Black Land Farmer back on the chart in 1961.

The song outlasted the career. Faron Young, Willie Nelson, Pat Boone, Elizabeth Cook, Wink Martindale, Hard Working Americans, Jimmy Gilmer, Steve Young and Sleepy LaBeef have all recorded it. Miller's last chart entry was A Little South of Memphis in 1964, and a 1965 signing with United Artists produced no further hits.

His spare honky-tonk delivery was out of step with the more heavily produced Nashville Sound that was taking over, and by his own account he lacked ambition and suffered from stage fright. He left the business altogether and went to work at a Chrysler dealership in Arlington, Texas.

Record collectors rediscovered him in the 1980s, and Germany's Bear Family Records reissued his catalogue in 1983. He returned to recording through Heart of Texas Records in 2006, kept working into his 90s, and performed with his old friend Willie Nelson at the Luck Reunion a few years ago. He had just finished a biography written by Greg Wilson, The Blackland Farmer: Life Among Country Music Legends. Miller is survived by his daughters Sandi Wilson and Lori Chaney, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Services have not been announced. His story belongs to the same country tradition of writers whose songs travel further than their names do.