The Murder on Music Row: A Corrupt Independent Chart May Unveil Secrets to a Nashville Murder
This article is part three of an eight-part series investigating the 1989 murder of Kevin Hughes, a country music chart director who had too much knowledge.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A bullet remains lodged in Sammy Sadler’s shoulder forever.
As Sadler started to regain consciousness after surgery, he noticed his arm looked like a swollen river after heavy rain. His dreams of a music career appeared to be in jeopardy, and two detectives from the Murder Squad were present at his bedside.
Detectives Bill Pridemore and Pat Postiglione began interviewing Sadler at 9:30 a.m. on March 10, 1989. Pridemore filled out his report on Supplemental Form 104 using an old typewriter and typed everything in uppercase letters.
He concluded each page with italics and an exclamation mark: INVESTIGATION CONTINUED!
Sadler’s account of the events was clear and has remained consistent for over three decades.
On the evening of March 9, the 22-year-old country music enthusiast called his friend Kevin Hughes, who served as the chart director at Cash Box magazine.
Sadler met with Hughes at the Cash Box office located in the Faron Young building on Division Street sometime before 8:30 p.m. Hughes drove them to the Captain D’s restaurant on West End, where they discussed sports and relationships, focusing on trivial matters until between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.
While Hughes was driving back toward Cash Box, Sadler came up with an idea. He suggested they stop by Evergreen Records, the place where he recorded his music and worked as a promoter. Sadler wanted to call his parents in Texas and hoped the record label would cover the expense of the long-distance call.
Hughes parked his car across from the Evergreen office, a quaint green-and-white craftsman house on 16th Avenue South.
Around 10 p.m., Sadler made the call to his parents. Since Hughes hadn’t previously met Jerry and Juanita, Sadler handed the phone to Hughes, who introduced himself.
Once Hughes returned the phone to Sadler, they heard a rattling noise that they thought came from the front door of Evergreen.
Sadler mentioned that Hughes peeked out the windows and saw “a Black guy” walking on the street.
By about 10:25 p.m., Sadler and Hughes decided to leave Evergreen. Hughes needed to return Sadler to the Young building to retrieve his car. Feeling uneasy about the noises, they stood on the porch of Evergreen to ensure it was safe.
They walked toward Hughes’s Pontiac, where Hughes took the driver’s seat while Sadler walked around to the front of the car. Sadler opened the passenger door and got in.
The assailant fired a single shot, striking Sadler about four inches below his right armpit.
Sadler reported that he did not see what became of Hughes. He fled, bleeding, to a nearby apartment to escape the situation.
His account ended there.
A particular detail of the story captured Pridemore’s attention.
Sadler had seemed in control of the night.
“He initiated the phone call to Kevin, urging him to meet for dinner and suggesting a trip to Evergreen Records under the guise of needing to make a toll-free call,” Pridemore noted. The murderer “had to know that (Kevin) would be there. What are the odds that someone would be waiting all night with a gun, wearing a ski mask and hat, just hoping that (Hughes and Sadler) would show up?”
For Pridemore, Sadler’s description of a spontaneous meeting and unscheduled stop didn’t add up.
After that initial hospital meeting with Sadler, Pridemore’s thoughts were clear: “It raises suspicion,” he stated.
Walking Distance from a Dream
Kevin Hughes had a different vision than many others who moved to Nashville.
Instead of focusing on mastering an instrument or dreaming of performing, he was drawn to the numbers behind the music.
His passion lay in the business aspects of the industry, particularly for songs about drinking and heartbreak.
As a teenager, Hughes’ parents would take him 45 minutes to Evansville, Indiana, every week so he could buy Billboard Magazine and pore over the music charts. For additional engagement, he started creating his own charts.
He also amassed a collection of rock albums.
“He would collect every record,” recalled Kyle Hughes, Kevin’s younger brother. “He’d catalog them on index cards, detailing the songwriter, release year, and the artist. He had around a thousand albums organized this way.”
Raised in Carmi, Illinois, on his family’s grain farm, Hughes had a preference for rock music over country. His brother noted that while he wasn’t fond of country, he was an avid fan of bands like Kansas, along with a wide range of rock from Air Supply to Metallica.
Their father often took them to see bands like Styx, Kiss, and Rick Springfield at the nearby Roberts Municipal Stadium in Evansville.
When their local radio switched from rock to country, it left both brothers feeling disheartened.
After finishing high school in 1983, Hughes soon made his way to Nashville to attend Belmont College, located about 200 miles from his hometown and close to Music Row.
In the early 1980s, he found himself just steps away from his aspirations.
While attending Belmont, Hughes scored an unpaid internship at Cash Box Magazine, focusing on music charts.
“All he wanted was a role in the music business,” Kyle Hughes shared. “He played the trumpet but was less interested in the artistry of music. He gravitated towards the industry side, aiming to produce and write songs rather than perform.”
Ultimately, Hughes aspired to join the Gospel Music Association in Nashville, believing that working at Cash Box would help him achieve that ambition.
Among the various music charts, Billboard was the most respected, while R&R (Radio and Records) was smaller yet credible. Cash Box, on the other hand, often held a lesser reputation.
Initially founded in the 1940s, Cash Box faced scrutiny in the industry for allegedly providing chart positions to producers, artists, and promoters in exchange for advertising payments and other unethical incentives.
This practice is referred to as payola.
It involves undisclosed payments in exchange for promotional support.
Such actions are illegal.
In 1959, popular disc jockey Alan Freed, recognized as the person who coined the term “rock ‘n roll,” lost his job at WABC radio in New York after a congressional investigation determined he and over 300 other DJs accepted payments for airplay.
‘Unusual events unfolding in my life’
Hughes advanced from intern to paid researcher at Cash Box.
He was officially hired full-time by chart director Richard D’Antonio, known as Tony D or “The Tone,” a charismatic figure infamous for his flashy appearance and talkative nature.
D’Antonio had met Tom McEntee, a previous Cash Box chart director, while gaming in the lobby of Universal Tower. Given his experience as a card dealer in Las Vegas, McEntee believed D’Antonio would excel with numbers.
D’Antonio would later lose his job due to inappropriate behavior and drug use in the workplace.
In 1987, Hughes decided to leave Belmont and dedicated himself to working full-time at Cash Box.
Marilyn Conwell, who knew Kevin Hughes since middle school, described him as a significant influence in her life.
“I faced some bullying due to my family’s struggles,” Conwell said. “However, Kevin never treated me that way. He was genuinely kind and always friendly towards everyone he met.”
The final conversation Conwell shared with Hughes occurred just two days before his tragic death.
She mentioned that he seemed troubled. “‘There are a lot of wild things happening in my life,’” he reportedly told her. “I asked if he wanted to discuss them, and he replied, ‘I can’t right now. Perhaps when I see you next, but I’m not able to talk about it at the moment.’”
Clearly, something was weighing on his mind.
As Hughes became acquainted with the Cash Box company, he began expressing discomfort, claiming the charts were not reliable.
He had received offers of favors and cash incentives.
Hughes informed his associates that he was trying to abstain from such dealings, although he admitted to accepting a few envelopes containing a couple of hundred dollars.
The singer who didn’t perform often
Sammy Sadler, who grew up in Leonard, Texas, had been singing country music since he was just three years old.
His parents supported his singing aspirations. His father owned a highly successful painting business, which allowed them to purchase a 56-acre farm where he raised quarter horses for racing in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.
Jerry Sadler got his son a guitar through the mail.
Sadler participated in his high school’s baseball team and played the cymbals in the marching band, but his time in the band was short-lived as he couldn’t read music and preferred to sing and play the guitar.
He briefly joined a band named Perfect Stranger, but that didn’t last either.
Just a couple of months after graduating from high school, Sadler moved to Nashville with his mother in hopes of pursuing a recording career.
On his first night in Nashville, Sadler’s father treated him to a limousine ride, and they spent the evening discussing his bright future. It was November 1984, coinciding with Ronald Reagan’s re-election victory over Walter Mondale.
Many aspiring stars in Nashville began their journey by hunting for open mic nights, performing in hotel bars, backyard parties, and anywhere they could find an audience.
This was similar to Garth Brooks’s rise to fame, which included working in a boot store, playing various gigs around Music City, and ultimately landing a record deal with Capitol Records after a notable performance at the Bluebird Cafe.
However, Sammy Sadler’s journey did not follow the same path as Garth Brooks.
Instead, Sadler’s route was marked by a tiny independent label, a tedious job, custom recordings, disreputable promoters, and a compromised music chart.
Detectives Bill Pridemore and Pat Postiglione needed to delve deep into the complexities of Nashville’s music scene to unravel the murder of Kevin Hughes, learning about the lives of artists like Sadler and the hidden workings of the music industry.
Sadler created a demo and began networking.
After a few months in Nashville, Sadler struggled to afford an apartment, leading his father to cover most of his rent.
Despite his financial challenges, he married Jeania, a teenage girl he had known back in Texas. He claims not to remember the exact date of his wedding (likely in 1985 or 86) or his subsequent divorce (which occurred after the shooting) and chose not to elaborate further on his ex-wife.
About six months into his Nashville experience, Sadler secured a deal with Evergreen Records, working with producer Johnny Morris. The independent label had previously produced a few successful singers like Narvel Felts and Robin Lee.
Morris agreed to assist Sadler in making an album while also hiring him for a promotion role that required 40 hours of work each week. Sadler earned $200 weekly (equating to $5 per hour) by calling radio stations to get them to play songs from Evergreen.
Radio stations would respond with their statistics, detailing how many Evergreen songs they added to their playlists and their play count.
Sadler would then relay that data to Cash Box magazine.
Some insiders in the industry criticized this practice, arguing that a singer reporting their small label’s figures was highly unethical.
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s outright corruption,” remarked Mark Carman, who later became the Director of Operations at Cash Box after Hughes’ death. “If the reporter … it’s like ballot harvesting; it’s completely nonsensical. It casts serious doubt on the validity of the whole operation.”
During the years (1985-1989) that Sadler was involved with Evergreen, Kevin Hughes was busy compiling statistics for Cash Box. Although Sadler reported he called Cash Box weekly for over four years, he only became acquainted with Hughes in the final months of Hughes’ life.
A perilous role in country music
Following the interview with Sadler in his hospital room, Detective Pridemore received a call from the Illinois State Police’s homicide unit, where Master Sgt. Terry Raymer had gotten a tip from a woman named Marilyn Conwell.
“The victim seemed very depressed,” Pridemore noted after speaking with Conwell over the phone. She shared that a music producer was attempting to get Hughes removed from his role as chart director. Although Hughes hadn’t disclosed the producer’s identity, “he believed he was on the verge of losing his job.”
It turned out that being the Cash Box chart director was a job fraught with danger.
In the early 1980s, the position was held by Tim Stichnoth until his tragic death in a car accident in 1982, which was followed by Juanita Butler taking over.
Butler stated that she felt her life was in danger due to a promoter named Ray Ruff, who allegedly told one of her acquaintances he would kill her.
She was questioned about why one of his artists was absent from the list.
“He warned me, ‘Don’t be shocked if your small Toyota someday explodes when you try to start it,’” Butler recalled. “Initially, I didn’t think much of that threat until Kevin Hughes was killed. That’s when I understood that it could have actually been a real threat.”
During the 1980s, there was a frequent turnover among Cash Box chart directors.
Richard “Tony” D’Antonio served in this role until he was dismissed on March 26, 1988. Following him, Joe Henderson took over, only to be succeeded by Hughes.
Hughes was officially recognized on November 19, 1988, as the Nashville coordinator for chart research.
Tragically, he would lose his life less than four months later.