NASHVILLE — Stonewall Jackson, the honky-tonk singer who overcame an abusive, hardscrabble childhood and went on to enjoy a long, successful career in country music, including more than 60 years as a member of the cast of the Grand Ole Opry, died on Saturday in Nashville.
“A Wound Time Can’t Erase” was the 11th in a string of 23 consecutive singles that reached the country Top 40 for Mr. Jackson from 1958 to 1965.
Loudermilk and Marijohn Wilkin, was his biggest record, occupying the top spot on the country chart for five weeks in 1959 and crossing over to the pop Top 10.
Most of Mr. Jackson’s recordings were made in the traditional style known as hard country: a lean, shuffling sound accented by keening fiddle and steel guitar.
His biological father, a railroad engineer named Waymond David Jackson, wanted him to be named after Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederate general from whom he claimed to have been descended, but he died of complications of a hernia before Stonewall, the third of his three boys, was born.
Fearing for their safety, Mr. Jackson’s mother eventually left her sons’ abusive stepfather and moved the family to Georgia, where they lived in a shack on the farm of the boys’ paternal grandmother and her husband.
Hoping to escape the drudgery of sharecropping, Mr. Jackson, who received only a limited education, lied about his age and joined the Army when he was 16.
The next year, he enlisted in the Navy, where he served on the submarine rescue vessel Kittiwake and began honing his skills as a guitar player and songwriter.
His many hit records notwithstanding, Mr. Jackson’s biggest claim to fame was his six-decade run on the Grand Ole Opry.
Mr. Jackson, who lived in Brentwood, Tenn., recalled that in 1956, during his first visit to Nashville, he presented himself unannounced at the offices of Acuff-Rose Music in hopes of securing a songwriting deal.
In 2007, Mr. Jackson’s relationship with the show soured when he sued Gaylord Entertainment, the Opry’s parent company, for age discrimination after his appearances on the program were curtailed to make room for younger artists.