Bob Ferguson, born Robert Bruce Ferguson in Willow Springs in the Missouri Ozarks on December 30, 1927, became a key shaper of the Nashville Sound of the 1960s and 1970s as the producer of hundreds of major recordings and the writer of classic country songs including “Wings of a Dove” and “Carroll County Accident.” His early interests in writing, outdoor life, and country music appeared in high school, when he worked as a typesetter for the local newspaper, as a fire tower lookout for the U.S. Forest Service, and began playing guitar. He served as a radioman in the U.S. Army during World War II testing equipment in Alaska, graduated from Washington State University in 1954 with a major in radio and television production while working as a radio announcer and performing with The KWCS Ramblers, and during the Korean War served as a reserve U.S. Marine drill instructor and producer of training films in San Diego. That film work led him to Nashville, where from 1956 to 1961 he produced “The World Outdoors” for the Tennessee Game and Fish Commission and began a Music Row career as a manager for artists including Ferlin Husky and Ray Price, an independent music publisher, and then a senior producer at RCA Victor Records under Chet Atkins. From 1963 to 1978 he played a major role in producing and developing the modernizing Nashville Sound through records by Porter Wagoner, Dolly Parton, Connie Smith, and more than fifty other artists. As a songwriter, he wrote “Wings of a Dove,” a major hit for Ferlin Husky in 1960, and “Carroll County Accident,” a number one song and Country Music Association Song of the Year in 1969 as recorded by Porter Wagoner. Also a naturalist, filmmaker, and anthropologist, Ferguson earned a master’s degree in anthropology at Vanderbilt University while working at RCA, led archeological digs at the early Mound Bottom Indian encampment near Nashville, and made historic contributions through his documentation and advocacy of Southeastern Native American culture, particularly for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians. After repeated trips to stage an all-star country music show for the Choctaw, he relocated to Neshoba County with his wife Martha and their children in 1978 to become the tribal historian and video producer. His co-authored book Indians of the Southeast: Then and Now, his work as editor of Chata Anumpa from 1968 to 1972, his lectures and video productions on Mississippi Choctaw and Southeastern Indian life, and his song “Choctaw Saturday Night” were lasting contributions.
