Jim Reeves
You might not expect the pioneering Nashville crooner Jim Reeves and ’90s hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur to have anything in common. But they both achieved more success on the singles charts in death than they ever did while alive.
Yes, six of Gentleman Jim’s 11 number one hits – including the curiously-titled “I Won’t Come In While He’s There” – arrived in the three years after his untimely passing in 1964. And even more remarkably, he remained a fixture on the charts for another two decades after that.
Of course, thanks to his soothing baritone and lush orchestral sound, Reeves was already very much a country icon when the private plane he was piloting fatally crashed during a violent thunderstorm just a few weeks before his 41st birthday. His manager Dean Manuel also lost his life in the accident, which occurred in a wooded area just outside Nashville. Both their bodies took two days to be recovered.
