T.G. Sheppard, born William Neal Browder in Humboldt, Tennessee, on 20 July 1944, is being celebrated on his 82nd birthday for his impact on country music during the country-pop era that preceded Nashville's neo-traditionalist shift led by artists such as George Strait and Randy Travis. After leaving home at 16 to pursue music in Memphis, he worked as a backing musician and record promoter before recording under the T.G. Sheppard name, launching a run of chart success that made him one of the genre's most consistent hitmakers of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Sheppard sent 22 songs to number one on the US country charts, including 14 consecutive chart-toppers between 1980 and 1982, beginning with his 1975 debut single "Devil in the Bottle". After signing with Warner Bros Records in 1977, he notched 15 straight top-10 hits, among them "Last Cheater's Waltz" (1979) and "Do You Wanna Go to Heaven" (1980), before his chart run cooled in the late 1980s. He returned with new material in 2019, and now tours regularly and hosts a show on SiriusXM's Elvis Radio, living in Hendersonville, Tennessee, with his wife, singer-songwriter Kelly Lang.