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Country Music

THE SHOW IN BRANSON ENDED LIKE ANY OTHER NIGHT. THEN CONWAY TWITTY COLLAPSED ON HIS TOUR BUS BEFORE HE COULD MAKE IT HOME. June 4, 1993. Conway Twitty had just performed at the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson, Missouri. At 59, he was still working the road, still carrying one of the most recognizable voices in country music, still the man fans knew from “Hello Darlin’,” “Tight Fittin’ Jeans,” and the long duet run with Loretta Lynn. The show ended. The bus started back toward Tennessee. Somewhere on the road, Conway became ill. This was not a dramatic stage collapse. Not a final bow under lights. It happened after the work was done, in the private space where touring musicians usually sleep, talk, eat, or stare out the window between cities. Then he collapsed. He was rushed to a hospital in Springfield, Missouri. Doctors took him into surgery. The problem was an abdominal aortic aneurysm — the kind of rupture that gives very little warning and almost no room for delay. By the next morning, June 5, Conway Twitty was gone. Loretta Lynn happened to be at the hospital because her husband Doo was recovering from heart surgery. She saw Conway briefly as he was brought in. That detail made the ending feel even heavier. The woman who had sung beside him through so many country heartbreaks was in the same hospital on the night his own last chapter arrived.

Introduction CONWAY TWITTY FINISHED THE SHOW IN BRANSON — THEN COLLAPSED ON HIS TOUR BUS...

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