Don Gibson dropped out of school in the second grade because a paralyzing stutter left him unable to speak. That silenced North Carolina kid grew up to become country music's "sad poet," writing some of the most covered songs in American music history and helping define the Nashville Sound era of the late 1950s.

This is the story of how crushing isolation became universal songwriting, from a pool hall childhood to RCA Studio B, where Chet Atkins wrapped Gibson's painfully honest lyrics in smooth, polished production. His simple, raw vocabulary worked like emotional open source code that artists in every genre could make their own.

• In one 1957 afternoon at RCA Studio B he cut both Oh Lonesome Me and I Can't Stop Loving You

• Oh Lonesome Me hit number one on the US country chart and set his career blueprint

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