King Malachi "Mel" Street (October 21, 1933 â October 21, 1978) was an American country music singer who had 13 top-20 hits on the Billboard country charts.
Street was born near Grundy, Virginia, United States. Publications cite his year of birth as 1933 and his family also maintains that he was born in 1933. However, his gravestone gives the year as 1936. He began performing on western Virginia and West Virginia radio shows at the age of 16. Street subsequently worked as a radio tower electrician in Ohio and as a nightclub performer in the Niagara Falls, New York, area. He moved back to West Virginia in 1963 to open an auto body shop.
From 1968 to 1972, Street hosted a show on a Bluefield, West Virginia, television station. He recorded his first single, "Borrowed Angel" â which he also wrote â in 1969 for a small, regional record label, Tandem Records. A larger label, Royal American Records, picked it up in 1972, and it became a top-10 Billboard hit. He recorded the biggest hit of his career, "Lovin' on Back Streets", in 1972.
Street's last television appearance was in 1977, in which he performed his 1976 hit "I Met a Friend of Yours Today" on That Good Ole Nashville Music.
Street recorded several hits in the mid-1970s, such as "You Make Me Feel More Like a Man", "Forbidden Angel", "I Met a Friend of Yours Today", "If I Had a Cheatin' Heart", and "Smokey Mountain Memories". He signed with Mercury Records in 1978, but suffering from clinical depression and alcoholism, he killed himself by a self-inflicted gunshot on October 21, 1978, his 45th birthday. He had a record debut on the country charts on October 21, as well, called "Just Hangin' On", and later charted four posthumous songs. Street's idol, George Jones, sang "Amazing Grace" at his funeral.
His posthumous album, Mel Street's Greatest Hits, was promoted via television advertisements in 1981, and sold 400,000 copies.