Country Artists We’ve Lost in 2011: Don Wayne

Wayne wrote the 1974 hit 'Country Bumpkin,' a song that went on to win the CMA and ACM Song of the Year awards, but prior to that he was a known Nashville songwriter who penned the chart-topping hit 'Saginaw, Michigan' for Lefty Frizzell in the early '60s and 'Lonesome Waltz' in 1953. He kept writing even after being drafted for a stint in the Army in 1954 but hit a dry patch in the '70s as his songs were thought to be too rural. A co-worker said something to the effect that “no one wants to hear about that frost on the pumpkin,” which went on to inspire ‘Country Bumpkin,’ where he recycled that pumpkin line. Don Wayne died of cancer at the age of 78.