Harold Lloyd Jenkins (September 1, 1933 – June 5, 1993), better known by his stage name Conway Twitty, was an American singer and songwriter.

Due to his following being compared to a religious revival, comedian Jerry Clower nicknamed Twitty "The High Priest of Country Music", the eventual title of his 33rd studio album.

[6] Twitty was a baseball player with a batting average of .450 when he graduated from high school, and he was offered a contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.

[6] However, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the Far East, during which time he organized a group called the Cimmarons to entertain his fellow soldiers.

[6] Soon after hearing Elvis Presley's song "Mystery Train", Jenkins began writing rock & roll material.

[8] Although he performed alongside Presley and other rock & roll pioneers throughout this period in a regional club scene situated within a 300-mile radius of Memphis, Tennessee, Twitty expressed a fundamental ambivalence toward Phillips' rhythm and blues-based house production style in an interview for Tony Palmer's All You Need Is Love: The Story of Popular Music (1976), noting that the producer's musical instincts subordinated many elements of Twitty's bluegrass music-influenced style.

[11] The record took several months to reach and stay at the top spot on the Billboard pop music charts in the United States and number 1 in 21 other countries, becoming the first of nine top-40 hits for Twitty.

[12] That same year, country singer Tabby West of ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee heard Twitty and booked him to appear on the show.

[7] When "It's Only Make Believe" was first released, because of vocal similarities, many listeners assumed that the song was actually recorded by Elvis Presley, using "Conway Twitty" as a pseudonym.

"Lonely Blue Boy", originally titled "Danny", was recorded by Presley for the film King Creole but was not used in the soundtrack.

[2] By 1965, Twitty had become disillusioned with rock & roll, particularly with the behavior of the fans,[13] and walked out of a show in the middle of a performance in New Jersey.

Disc jockeys on some country-music radio stations refused to play his first few country albums, because he was known as a rock and roll singer.

It was a success, and many more followed, including "Lead Me On" (1971), "Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man" (1973), "As Soon As I Hang Up the Phone" (1974), "Feelins'" (1975), "I Still Believe in Waltzes", "I Can't Love You Enough", and many others.

[14] His next 23 consecutive singles all made it into the top 10, with 13 reaching number one, including "Don't Take It Away", "I May Never Get to Heaven", "Happy Birthday Darlin'", and remakes of major pop hits such as "The Rose", "Slow Hand" and "Tight Fittin' Jeans", a song written by Michael Huffman, released in June 1981 as the first single from the album Mr. T. The song was Twitty's 26th number one on the country chart.

In 1985, going by all weekly music trade charts, the song "Don't Call Him a Cowboy" became the 50th single of his career to achieve a number-one ranking.

He received an offer to play with the Philadelphia Phillies after high school, but he was drafted into the U.S. Army before he could sign the contract.

[17] Twitty threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the team's inaugural home opener at Herschel Greer Stadium on April 26, 1978.

[18] Twitty would also host celebrity softball games for charity, frequently playing against a team put together by Barbara Mandrell.

Opened in 1982, Twitty City was a popular tourist stop throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s; it was shut down in 1994 following a year-long tribute show called Final Touches, when fans and peers in the music business dropped by.

When Music Village and Twitty was sold in 1989 and CMT in 1990, Conway turned his attention to the burgeoning Branson market playing to sell-out crowds.

[citation needed] On June 4, 1993, Twitty became ill while performing at the Jim Stafford Theatre in Branson, Missouri.

He was rushed into surgery, but died of an abdominal aortic aneurysm, in the early hours of the following morning at Cox South Hospital in Springfield, Missouri, at the age of 59.

Four months after Twitty's death, George Jones included a cover version of "Hello Darlin'" on his album High-Tech Redneck.

Twitty was buried at Sumner Memorial Gardens in Gallatin, Tennessee, in a red granite vault under his birth name Harold L. Jenkins.

Five years after his death, The Tennessee Appeals Court referred to that case in its opening sentence with, "This is yet another chapter in the administration of the estate of Harold L. Jenkins, a popular entertainer whose stage name was 'Conway Twitty.'"

The court sided with the daughters finding that the accountants and controllers of Twitty's books while he was alive, who later became the executors of the estate, kept "limited and sketchy information" when it came to the family members.

The court found Twitty rarely, if ever, memorialized contracts with family members, contractors and employees in writing.

Twitty's songs have also been covered numerous times, including four notable covers, George Jones's rendition of "Hello Darlin", Blake Shelton's "Goodbye Time", the Misfits' and Glen Campbell's[36] versions of "It's Only Make Believe", and Elvis Presley's version of "There's a Honky Tonk Angel (Who'll Take Me Back In)".