Frank Luther (born Francis Luther Crow, August 4, 1899 – November 16, 1980) was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist. Early life Born on a farm near Lakin, Kansas, 40 miles from the Colorado border, he was raised on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, where his father, William R. Crow, and mother, Gertrude Phillips Crow, dealt in livestock and trotting horses. He began to study piano at age six, improvising his own music when repetitious exercises bored him, and began vocal instruction at 13. When he was 16, he toured the Midwest as tenor with a quartet called The Meistersingers. He began studying at the University of Kansas, but attended a revival meeting conducted by evangelist Jesse Kellems and accepted an offer to become his musical director. During a subsequent stop in Iola, Kansas, Crow was ordained, despite his never having studied for the ministry. Career By 1921, Crow was in the pulpit of the First Christian Church in Bakersfield, California. There, he organized a 30-voice children's choir, an 80-voice adult choir, and two church orchestras. Writing and delivering his weekly sermons proved more problematic, and the Boy Preacher, as he was known locally, resigned to devote his creative energies to the world of music. Returning to Kansas, he married vocalist and musician Zora Layman on May 8, 1920, and the couple eventually relocated to New York City. In 1926, he was seriously pursuing further vocal training when he was invited to join the DeReszke Singers, as tenor/accompanist. They declared his surname, Crow, to be un-musical, and so he dropped it and became Frank Luther from that day on. The quartet toured with humorist Will Rogers, with whom Frank spent considerable time while on the road. Luther joined a popular quartet, The Revelers, as tenor in 1927. They toured the British Isles, where Frank met the future Queen of the United Kingdom and did a set accompanied on the drums by the Prince of Wales. Country music In 1928, with his singing only gradually returning to top form, Frank met and became acquainted with fellow Kansan Carson Robison, who had teamed with tenor Vernon Dalhart to make many dozens of top-selling recordings of rural American favorites, shortly to be known in the trade as hillbilly music. Robison and Dalhart were severing their recording partnership, and it was suggested that Luther listen to some Dalhart