Country legend Ferlin Husky was born in Cantwell, Missouri on December 3, 1925. Husky was given his stage name mistakenly by his father, who had intended to name him the more traditional Furland, but misspelled his name on the birth certificate.Husky was raised on a farm in Flat River, Missouri and attended Irondale High School before dropping out to begin working first as a trucker then as an iron worker. Throughout this period of time he also applied some guitar lessons he had from an uncle while appearing in various honky tonks in the evening.After World War II Husky began work as a radio disk jockey in Bakersfield, California and parlayed that exposure into a record deal in 1953. He developed his career with the help of Tennessee Ernie Ford before topping the country charts with the track “Dear John Letter” with Jean Shepherd later that year.