 On the steamy 30th of July, Overton Park, Tennessee, was teeming with country music enthusiasts. There was a big country music show down at the band shell. Big names. Webb Pierce, Slim Whitman, Marty Robbins. Some small potatoes, too. And one young man, the smallest of them all. He had cut a record, which practically nobody had heard, but it was barely sufficient to qualify him as fill-in talent for the show.