{"id":987,"date":"2019-04-21T01:38:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-21T01:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2019\/04\/21\/earl-thomas-conley-and-cerebral-atrophy\/"},"modified":"2019-04-21T01:38:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-21T01:38:00","slug":"earl-thomas-conley-and-cerebral-atrophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=987","title":{"rendered":"Earl Thomas Conley and Cerebral Atrophy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\"earlEarl Thomas Conley was a country music singer-songwriter who during the 1980s and 1990s had 24 Top-10 country singles including 18 that were Number One.  Only Alabama<\/em> and Ronnie Milsap had more number one hits during the decade.  <\/div>\n
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\n\tThis month, at age 77, Conley died after spending many months in hospice care for cerebral atrophy, a condition that had caused progressive loss of memory over several years.  Popular performing musicians are prone to this condition because they are usually sleep deprived — they perform at night, and while on tours they sleep in a bus during the day.  They are also exposed to a lot of smoke as well as to people who use drugs and alcohol.  Cerebral atrophy is associated with anything that can damage the brain such as head trauma, infectious diseases, strokes, diabetes or arteriosclerosis, but I could find no media evidence that he had any of these conditions. <\/div>\n
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\n\tEarly Years and Music Career<\/strong><\/div>\n
\n\tConley was born in 1941, the third of eight children, in the small country town of Portsmouth, Ohio. When he was 14, his father lost his job with the railroad, so he moved to live with one of his older sisters in Jamestown, Ohio.  After high school, he was offered a scholarship to attend art school but instead joined the Army, where he began to write songs and sing in a religious revival group.  At age 27, he left the army and worked on the railroad and in steel mills and commuted to Nashville to try to further his music career.   <\/div>\n
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\n\tAt age 34, he had his first big breakthrough when the song "Smokey Mountain Memories" that he wrote for another musician made the top 40 country hit list.  At age 35, he wrote "This Time I’ve Hurt Her More Than She Loves Me” and Conway Twitty made it the number one country hit.  At age 40 he had his own first number one hit, “Fire & Smoke.”   In 1983, at age 43, he was nominated for multiple Grammy Awards for his song, "Holding Her and Loving You".  <\/div>\n
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