King Malachi "Mel" Street (October 21, 1933 – October 21, 1978)[1] was an American country music singer who had 13 top-20 hits on the Billboard country charts.
Biography
Street was born near Grundy, Virginia, United States.[2][3] Publications cite his year of birth as 1933 and his family also maintains that he was born in 1933. However, his gravestone gives the year as 1936.[4][5]
He began performing on western Virginia and West Virginia radio shows at the age of sixteen.[6] Street subsequently worked as a radio tower electrician in Ohio,[6] and as a nightclub performer in the Niagara Falls, New York area.[7] He moved back to West Virginia in 1963 to open an auto body shop.[8]
From 1968 to 1972, Street hosted a show on a Bluefield, West Virginia television station.[9] He recorded his first single, "Borrowed Angel" – which he also wrote – in 1969 for a small regional record label, Tandem Records.[6] A larger label, Royal American Records, picked it up in 1972 and it became a top-10 Billboard hit.[6] He recorded the biggest hit of his career, "Lovin' on Back Streets", in 1972.[6]
Street's last television appearance was in 1977, in which he performed his 1976 hit "I Met A Friend Of Yours Today" on That Good Ole Nashville Music.
Street recorded several hits in the mid-1970s, such as "You Make Me Feel More Like a Man," "Forbidden Angel," "I Met a Friend of Yours Today," "If I Had a Cheatin' Heart," and "Smokey Mountain Memories". He signed with Mercury Records in 1978, but suffering from clinical depression and alcoholism,[6] he killed himself by a self-inflicted gunshot on October 21, 1978, his 45th birthday.[3] He had a record debut on the country charts on October 21 as well, called "Just Hangin' On",[10] and later charted four posthumous songs. Street's idol, George Jones, sang "Amazing Grace" at his funeral.[6]
His posthumous album, Mel Street's Greatest Hits, was promoted via television advertisements in 1981, and sold 400,000 copies.[6]
Huey, Steve. (2003). Edited by Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, & Stephen Erlewine. "Mel Street (King Malachi Street)." All Music Guide to Country, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2003. ISBN0-87930-760-9
Schuler, Dennis Sr. and Larry J. Delp. Mel Street – A Country Legend, Charleston, WV: Mountain State Press, 2002. ISBN0-941092-47-X
