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Conway Twitty Used A Stage Name For His Entire Career… & He Had A Brilliant Reason For Doing It
Conway Twitty… but not exactly.
Of course, artists using stage names is nothing new… it’s pretty much been happening since the beginning of show business. Icons like Marilyn Monroe made names to use in the public that they felt fit their “image” better, so to speak, and that includes plenty of country artists too.
Legends like Patsy Cline, John Denver and Randy Travis had stage names, as do some modern day stars like Carly Pearce, Koe Wetzel and Hardy.
But I think one legend who went by his stage name for his entire career that many people may not realize is Conway Twitty, who actually came up with a brilliant name in a way you may not expect. During an appearance on the The David Letterman Show while promoting his 1989 House on Old Lonesome Road album, Twitt’s fifty-fourth studio album, Letterman asked him about his name.
Conway Twitty’s real name is Harold Jenkins, but when he was first trying to make it in the music business back in the ’50s, your record label would send your songs to the radio station, and they would pick and choose what they wanted to play (not all that different than how they do it today, but I digress…). At the time, Elvis Presley was very popular, and had a very unique and cool name, though that was obviously his real name.
Conway, or Harold, thought it would be a smarter marketing move to find a stage name for himself that was as unique as Elvis’, so that he might increase his chances of a DJ picking up his record over someone else with a more generic name.
It was pretty dang smart to be thinking that way, well before most of them had complex PR and marketing in the way many young artists do today, and he actually turned to a United States map to help him find some words that stood out:
“That’s a stage name from the map of the United States back in 1957. My real name is Harold Jenkins. But I thought, disc jockeys back in the ’50s got so many records every week, they’d get 50 or 60 records, and they had to decide what they were gonna play and what they weren’t gonna play. And I thought, well, maybe with an interesting name like Elvis Presley or something like that, they might play it.
And once they do, you’re on your own. So I started thinking about all kinds of names, and finally, in desperation, I just got the map down and looked around the Memphis area, where I’m from down there, and I came across Conway, Arkansas, and I came across Twitty, Texas, and I put them together. That’s the way it’s been for the last 33 years.”
Clearly, it was a winning strategy, and he had his first radio hit with “It’s Only Make Believe” in 1958. The song was so successful that it went number one on the Billboard chart for two weeks, and Conway Twitty the star country artist was born.
Most of the country artists will just play off of their own name, or use a family name, if they want something different than what’s on their birth certificate, but to pick out something completely random and make it work… that’s impressive, and the name just fits him. I can’t explain it.
Conway also talked about owning a couple of minor league baseball teams, including the Nashville Sounds, and more, in addition to performing on the show.
You can watch the full interview below.
The post Conway Twitty Used A Stage Name For His Entire Career… & He Had A Brilliant Reason For Doing It first appeared on Whiskey Riff.
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