Joe Diffie, Grammy-Winning Country Music Star, Dies at 61

Those We’ve Lost He was known for his ballads and honky-tonk singles, like “Home” and “Pickup Man. ” On Friday, he announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Joe Diffie, who went from working in oil fields and foundries to becoming one of the most commercially successful country singers of the early and mid-1990s, died on Sunday in Nashville. He was 61. His death, from complications of the coronavirus, was announced by his publicist, Scott Adkins. Mr.

Diffie had revealed on Friday that he was being treated for the condition. At the dawn of the 1990s, country music was embarking upon a great, rollicking party period, and Mr. Diffie, with a touch of aw-shucks wryness to his performances and a robust head of blond hair that shot back from his head like wispy flames, was suited to the moment. As a singer, he had a crisp, sentimental voice, which he deployed on ballads like “Is It Cold in Here” and “Home,” his debut single from 1990; it topped the Billboard country chart, the first of his five No.

1 country singles. He placed a dozen more songs in the country Top 10. But he was also given to a playful, plucky rowdiness, and that animated his biggest hits. His third and fourth albums, which leaned heavily in this direction — “Honky Tonk Attitude” (1993) and “Third Rock from the Sun” (1994) — both went platinum.

Two of his other albums went gold. “Pickup Man,” from 1994, was his most successful song, topping the Billboard country chart for four weeks. It was also the song that best took advantage of his various talents: On the one hand, it was a gently funny song about sexual attraction, but, on the other, it was also an emphatically boisterous statement of pride about boys and the trucks that boost their egos. When he sang “Pickup Man,” he alternated between plain and direct singing, humorously dipping and bending his syllables for emphasis.

“You can set my truck on fire and roll it down a hill/and I still wouldn’t trade it for a Coupe de Ville,” he sang, adding, “I met all my wives in traffic jams/There’s just something women like about a pickup man. ” The title track from “Third Rock From the Sun,” which went to No. 1, was a lighthearted catalog of rural misadventure. His 1995 Christmas album included a honky-tonk anthem, “Leroy the Redneck Reindeer.