96-Year-Old Writes Song for Dearly Departed Wife, Becomes Oldest Artist on Billboard’s Top 100

When a  96-year-old man becomes a social media sen­sa­tion, it’s usu­al­ly not too hard to see why.

Fred Sto­baugh, the gent fea­tured above, ran across a call for entries for Green Shoe Stu­dio’s Singer Song­writer Con­test and used it as an excuse to write a love song for his wife, Lor­raine. That’s plen­ty sweet, espe­cial­ly when one does the math—Fred and Lor­raine were togeth­er for 75 years, and mar­ried for all but three. When one learns that Fred buried his bride just six weeks before hear­ing about the con­test, the sto­ry takes on a sort of roman­tic urgency. We need him to win this con­test.

Rather than upload­ing a video of his “Oh Sweet Lor­raine” to YouTube as instruct­ed, Sto­baugh slipped the lyrics into a mani­la enve­lope and mailed them off along with an explana­to­ry note. Green Shoe’s Jake Col­gan was open to the trans­gres­sion, as befits a record pro­duc­er who made the con­scious deci­sion to set up shop in Peo­ria, Illi­nois.

It’s safe to assume most of the entrants approached the con­test with their eyes on the prize, a pro­fes­sion­al­ly record­ed demo CD and pho­to shoot, and lau­rels with which to adorn their devel­op­ing careers. No dis­re­spect to them—they were fol­low­ing the rules in good faith—but the puri­ty of Strobaugh­’s motives no doubt set him apart as much, if not more than his longevi­ty.

Speak­ing of which, it was just announced that Sto­baugh has top­pled the-then-85-year-old Tony Ben­nett to become the old­est artist ever appear­ing in Bill­board­’s Hot 100.

With all the atten­tion being paid to the endear­ing­ly mod­est Mr. Strobaugh, let’s do take a moment to acknowl­edge this year’s actu­al con­test win­ner Gra­ham Cowger, as well as the run­ners up. A class act can be a dif­fi­cult act to fol­low. To quote Lou Reed entire­ly out of con­text, “always back to Lor­raine.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Acoustic Gui­tar Project Gives Song­writ­ers World­wide a Gui­tar and One Week to Write a Song

Last Min­utes with ODEN: A Touch­ing Short Film

9‑Year-Old Philoso­pher Pon­ders the Mean­ing of Life and the Uni­verse

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is remind­ed of the won­der­ful Joe Put­ter­lik in Miran­da July’s film, The Future. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday