*Jim Reeves stands as one of the most distinctive singers in the history of country music. He became known as a crooner because of his warm, velvety voice which was a major component of the sophisticated, pop-influenced Nashville Sound that emerged during the late 1950s and early 1960s and boosted country music to new commercial heights while strengthening Nashville’s role as a music center.

In his earliest RCA Victor recordings, Reeves was still singing in the loud style of his first recordings, a style considered normal for country-western performers at that time. But “Four Walls,” a #1 country and #11 pop hit, marked his transition to pop-tinged love ballads sung in an intimate, low register, close to the microphone.

In 1959–60 Reeves scored his greatest hit with the Joe Allison composition "He'll Have to Go," which earned him a platinum record. He had a posthumous No.1 hit on the United Kingdom pop charts in 1966 with "Distant Drums". Jim Reeves was one of the few Western singerswho became widely known in the non-European world, including Africa, India and Southeast Asia. To this day he is affectionately referred to as "Gentleman Jim" in those parts.

Reeves died when the small aircraft he was piloting crashed during a thunderstorm near Nashville, Tennessee on July 31, 1964.

He was elected posthumously to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1967, and in 1998 he was inducted into the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame in Carthage, Texas, where the Jim Reeves Memorial is located.*

* reference  CountryMusic Hall of Fame & Wikipedia