Country Singer Daron Norwood Dead at 49

Country singer Daron Norwood, who placed two songs in the Top 40 during his peak in the '90s, has passed away.

According to the Associated Press, Norwood was last seen with friends on Tuesday night (July 21). His landlord let himself in to Norwood's apartment in Hereford, Texas, 40 miles Southwest of Amarillo, on Wednesday (July 22) to check on the singer, and found his body in his bedroom. Capt. Kirsten Williams of the Hereford Police Department tells the AP that investigators do not suspect foul play. Norwood was 49 years old.

Signed to Giant Records in 1993, Norwood released his self-titled debut album that year, and followed it up with Ready, Willing and Able in 1995. His debut produced two Top 40 hits with "If It Wasn't for Her I Wouldn't Have You" and "Cowboys Don't Cry." Norwood walked away from his music career at the height of his success in 1995, admitting that he was battling extreme alcoholism.

''I loved Jack Daniel's and Jack Daniel's hated me,'' Norwood told the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. ''I was so far down that I should have died. I was averaging 20 to 25 shots of Jack Daniel's a night. I was at the bottom.''

''I had nothing left to give,'' he added. ''Everything a guy could want, I had. It seemed to a lot of my followers that I was on cloud nine and that my career was moving forward, but that just wasn't so. I had misused the life and career God had given me, and now I felt like He was tapping me on the shoulder. My dream had come true, but now it was fading away in alcohol and drugs.''

Norwood later formed an organization to speak to children about the dangers of drugs and alcohol, and he continued to perform and record sporadically, but his life still appeared troubled. He was arrested in Florida in 2008 after his wife, Kimberly, accused him of battery, according to WPOC. Those charges were later dropped.

In 2009, students at a school in Panhandle, Texas, where Norwood was scheduled to give an anti-drugs and alcohol speech, said the singer instead spent nearly two hours shooting hoops, running around the school gym, playing music and even shouting at the students.

Norwood "wasn't ready at all and he just was saying all this crazy stuff and we just freaked out and he told us to bow our heads and he was yelling at us and stuff," one student told News Channel 10. "It was kinda crazy."

Norwood's cause of death has not yet been determined.

Listen to Daron Norwood's "If It Wasn't For Her ..."