The Country Music Hall of Famer, brought up on a West Tennesse farm, was country through and through with a velvet and mellow baritone voice that was, perhaps, only equalled by ‘Gentleman’ Jim Reeves.

Indeed, so soft and honeyed was Eddy’s voice that it was once described by music icon Dinah Shore as “warm butter and syrup being poured over wonderful buttermillk pancakes”.

Eddy, one of Nashville wealthiest residents, leaves an estate estimated at 40 million dollars. Before Garth Brooks arrived in the 1990s, Arnold was easily country music’s biggest record-seller.

Sales of his discs from the mid-1940s to the present, in every recorded medium from 78s to CDs, topped 80 million, phenomenal sales surpassed only by Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby and the Beatles,

Arnold became a key figure in urbanising country music – smoothing it out, opening it to influences from the wider world of pop music. His personal musical influences were Gene Autry and Bing Crosby and those he influenced included Marty Robbins and Jim Reeves.

He had a Top 10 hit in Britain in 1966 with Make The World Go Away, with the song remaining in the charts for 17 weeks.

Eddy, known affectionately as the “Tennessee Plowboy”, pioneered the Nashville Sound, a mixture of country and pop styles, blended by crying steel guitars, mean fiddle pickin’ and even strings, and directed by musical maestro, the late Chet Atkins. It was the era of Jim Reeves, Patsy Cline, Faron Young, Lefty Frizzell, Bob Wills and Webb Pierce in Nashville and Eddy Arnold was the tops in fan appeal.

Between 1945 and 1983, he had 145 recordings in the American country charts including 28 No 1s. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966.

Beginning with his first No 1 hit in 1947, It’s A Sin, Eddy’s other chart successes came with Cattle Call (a hit also for Slim Whitman); The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me; Anytime; Bouquet of Roses; What’s He Doing In My World; I Want To Go With You, Somebody like Me; Lonely Again; Turn The World Around and Welcome To My World (a Jim Reeves hit).

Eddy’s first manager was a certain ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, who later gained fame managing Elvis Presley and Hank Snow, but they parted in 1953.

Arnold added television to his credits, hosting summer replacement shows for Perry Como (1952) and Dinah Shore (1953). He also appeared in movies, starring in Feudin’ Rhythm (1949) and Hoedown (1950).

Eddy’s record royalties, publishing and personal appearance income, and business investments, made him a wealthy man.