Earl Thomas Conley (October 17, 1941 – April 10, 2019) was an American country music singer-songwriter. He was one of the most popular and prolific country singers of the 1980s.

• Between 1980 and 2003, he recorded ten studio albums, including seven for RCA Records.

• In the 1980s and into the 1990s, Conley also charted more than 30 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, of which 18 reached Number One.

• His 18 Billboard Number One country singles during the 1980s were the third most by any artist in any genre during that decade, after Alabama and Ronnie Milsap.

• Upon his death, some of Country music’s biggest stars shared memories of “ETC” and how his music had affected their own careers.

• During his career Earl Thomas collaborated or wrote songs for: Conway Twitty, Mel Street, Randy Scruggs, Michael Pyle, and Blake Shelton.

At 18 years-old, he joined the Army in 1959. While stationed in West Germany for two years, he became interested in country music.

After his 5 years of military service, he moved back to Ohio, and also he began singing gospel music with his beloved sister. Upon her untimely death, Earl Thomas moved to Huntsville, Alabama where he had ancestral family ties. He worked in the steel mills which then fabricated metal materials for the space ships in the booming space industry that characterized the town as ‘Rocket City’. In Huntsville, he learned the stories of the blue-collar people working on the production lines, and the rhythms of their lives.

In 1968, while working at the steel mill, he met record producer Nelson Larkin, who helped him sign with independent record label GRT in 1974. Larkin was selling songs that he had written to other artists, including Conway Twitty and Mel Street, who were having much success with them. Conley moved to Nashville and never left.