Born on 15^th April 1937 in Blackjack, Texas, he grew up on his parents’ farm. As a child he listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the family’s battery radio and was taught country music by his father, Joe, who played various string instruments in local amateur bands. He formed his first country band while still at high school, where he was also the star baseball player. In 1955, after watching Elvis Presley perform on his tour of Texas, he rejected a trial with the Pittsburgh Pirates major league baseball team, opting for a musical career instead.

It wasn’t long before his band stopped playing country music in favor of rockabilly music. He also went to Dallas where he made his first recordings, most of which were never released. The following year, after graduating, he made his debut on the Louisiana Hayride show, replacing Johnny Cash. He formed a new band and soon became a regular on the show. In 1957 he signed with the Los Angeles based Imperial Records and in mid-1957 he performed his first song, All Night Long, in the film Carnival Rock. However, the song made little impact on the charts.

During his next recording session he cut a cover of the song, Red Hot, a number associated with Sun Records’ artists Billy Emerson and Billy Lee Riley. Considered to be the best version yet released, the song failed to ignite the charts, but the brilliant sound did have an influence on future rock ‘n’ roll teen idol, Ricky Nelson. In fact, several members of Luman’s band left to join Nelson. Imperial released Luman when his next record also failed to do anything on the charts. He formed a new band and moved to Las Vegas, but returned to Los Angeles in April 1958, signing with the new Capitol label.

His singles once again failed to chart and in June 1959 he moved to the newly established Warner Brothers label. He relocated to Nashville where he made the change to country and western. His career entered a new successful phase, finally cracking the US pop and country charts and the UK chart with a Top Ten hit in 1960. Unfortunately, he was drafted soon afterwards and spent the next two years in the army. On his discharge in 1964, he began recording again and over the course of the next ten years had a string of major hits in both the US and UK on the Hickory, Epic and Polydor labels.

Luman managed to recover from a major heart attack in 1975 but died of pneumonia on 27^th December 1978.