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Ferlin Husky was a man plagued by questions of
identity. He came into the world as Ferland Eugene
Huskey on December 3, 1925 on a farm in southeastern
Missouri. When he was 17 years old he obtained a copy
of his birth certificate and discovered the doctor had incorrectly printed his name as ‘Ferlin.’ He
decided to simply make the switch. When Ferlin began performing several years later he adopted the
name Tex Terry. Then he moved to California and reinvented himself as Terry Preston. He ultimately
reverted to his legal name, Ferlin Huskey, before dropping the ‘e’in his last name and finally becoming
Ferlin Husky. Along the way, he developed comic alter-egos, including Terrible Terry and Simon
Crum, the latter earning him two Top 5 singles on the ‘Billboard’ country chart.
One of Husky’s official bios referred to Simon as
“the incorrigible hayseed bon vivant.”
Ferlin
gave the boisterous country rube character a distinct personality from his own, and would often
switch back and forth between Simon’s voice and his own speaking voice in outrageously rapid-fire
repartee that could be both highly entertaining and vaguely unsettling. In a June, 1968 piece in
‘Country Song Roundup’ magazine, Ferlin quipped,
“There is no Ferlin Husky. He’s just another
character Simon imitates!”
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