Earl Thomas Conley (October 17, 1941 – April 10, 2019) was an American country music singer-songwriter. Between 1980 and 2003, he recorded ten studio albums, including seven for RCA Records. In the 1980s and into the 1990s, Conley also charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, of which eighteen reached Number One. His eighteen Billboard Number One country singles during the 1980s were the third most by any artist in any genre during that decade, after Alabama and Ronnie Milsap.
Conley was born October 17, 1941, in Portsmouth, Ohio, to Glenna Ruth (née Davis; 1918–2002) and Arthur Conley (1910–1989). When he was fourteen, his father lost his job with the railroad, forcing the young boy to move in with his older sister in Jamestown, Ohio. He was offered a scholarship to an art school, but rejected it in favor of joining the U.S. Army. While in the Army, he became a member of a Christian-influenced trio, where his musical talent and vocal ability first became apparent. He then decided to consider performing as a serious career option. He shifted more deeply into the classic country sounds of artists such as Merle Haggard and George Jones. During this period he first tried his hand at songwriting. In 1968, after his honorable discharge from the Army, he began commuting from Dayton to Nashville. In 1973 while in Nashville, he met Dick Heard, who produced country music singer Mel Street. This meeting eventually led to the Conley-Heard collaboration on the song "Smokey Mountain Memories", which made the top 10 for Street. After his discharge from the military, Conley had been playing in clubs in Nashville at night, supporting himself by working blue-collar jobs during the day.
In his early days before fame, Conley worked in a steel mill near Portsmouth, Ohio. Until one day he made the bold decision to pack up and move to Nashville.
Feeling that he wasn't making any progress in Nashville, Conley moved to Huntsville, Alabama. There, he met record producer Nelson Larkin, who helped him sign with independent record label GRT in 1974. Conley released four singles on that label, none of which became hits. At the same time, he was selling songs that he had written to other artists, including Conway Twitty and Mel Street, who were having much success with them.

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