Leon Roger Payne, known as “the Blind Balladeer,” was an American country music singer and songwriter. He was blind in one eye at birth and lost sight in the other during early childhood, later attending the Texas School for the Blind from 1924 to 1935. He began his music career in the mid-1930s, including performing on KWET radio in Palestine, Texas, in 1935. Payne also worked as a regular musician at Jerry Irby’s nightclub in Houston and later formed Jack Rhodes and the Lone Star Buddies in 1949 with his stepbrother, songwriter Jack Rhodes. Payne wrote hundreds of country songs from 1941 until his death in 1969, including “I Love You Because,” “You’ve Still Got a Place in My Heart,” and “Lost Highway” (1948), later made famous by Hank Williams in 1949. His own recording of “I Love You Because” reached Number 1 on the Billboard country chart, the only version to do so. He also wrote under the pseudonym Pat Patterson, including “It’s Nothing to Me,” recorded by Sanford Clark. He died on September 11, 1969, in San Antonio, Texas, from a heart attack.
