Known as “the King of Western Swing”, Hank Thompson was a raw-boned country music star of the old school, rooted in the western swing style popular in the dance-halls of Texas in the 1940s and 1950s. His songs tackled such subjects as inconsolable heartache and hard drinking but gave them a good-natured twist of easy-going humour, and he managed to update his sound so successfully that his career spanned six decades.

Among the songs he made famous in a hit-making run that gave him 29 American chart entries between 1948 and 1975 were The Wild Side of Life, A Six Pack to Go, Humpty Dumpty Heart and How Cold Hearted Can You Get.

The latter was typical of his song-writing style, as with characteristic black humour he sang: “I know that you'd be satisfied if I took strychnine and croaked.” Many a maudlin country crooner would have milked the line to have listeners crying into their beer. When Thompson delivered it, the effect was to make you smile.

Born Henry William Thompson in 1925 in Waco, Texas, he got his first guitar at the age of ten and as a teenager he performed on a local radio station, billing himself as “Hank The Hired Hand”. During the Second World War he served in the US Navy as a radio operator and began to write humorous songs to entertain his naval colleagues. On his discharge he took college extension courses in electrical engineering at Princeton and the University of Texas in Austin, where he put together a band called the Brazo Valley Boys and recorded a few songs for local labels, including the perennially popular Whoa Sailor.

When in 1947 the cowboy star Tex Ritter guested on Thompson's Texas radio show, the two got on well and Ritter recommended him to his label, Capitol.

Thompson's early releases were in the style of the great western swing bands of the time, but he updated the sound, using his skills as an engineer to add a brighter, sharper tone and a tougher, honky-tonk edge. He also set up his own state-of-the-art home studio in Oklahoma City and was one of the first artists to record in stereo.

Among his biggest hits was his 1952 recording of The Wild Side of Life. Initially released as a B-side, the song - which contained the classic line “I didn't know God made honky-tonk angels” - shot to No1 and stayed there for 15 weeks. It even generated an “answer” song in Kitty Wells' hit, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels.

By the early 1950s Thompson was backed by a studio band that usually included Merle Travis on lead guitar, and he had such hits as Humpty Dumpty Love, Swing Wide Your Gate of Love — a re-recording of Whoa Sailor - The Blackboard of My Heart, Smoky the Bar and a version of Woody Guthrie's Oklahoma Hills. His own compositions were notable for an enviable ability to turn a clever phrase while his simple, lively melodies never lost sight of the fact that he was making music for people to dance to at a Saturday night hoedown.

Although he walked out on a coveted gig at the Grand Ole Opry early in his career in protest at the low pay - he claimed he received just $9 for his first appearance - he toured incessantly with the Brazo Valley Boys and was still playing more than 100 live dates a year when he was in his seventies. His At The Golden Nugget had the distinction of beingthe first country album to be recorded live, at Las Vegas in 1961.

After 18 successful years with Capitol, Thompson moved in 1965 to Warner Brothers and then to Dot Records. Shifting away from western swing in favour of a more commercial Nashville sound and with his Brazos Valley Boys replaced by slick session men, the hits continued into the mid-1970s with songs such as Where is the Circus, Mark of a Heel, The Older the Violin the Sweeter the Music, On Tap, In the Can or in the Bottle and He's Got a Way With Women. The last, with its tag line “and he's just got away with mine”, proved that his songwriting had lost none of his love for wordplay.

Although the hits dried up after 1975, he continued touring and recording as one of country's respected elder statesman, a status that was confirmed when contemporary country stars such as Lyle Lovett, Vince Gill, Brooks and Dunn, Marty Stuart and George Jones queued up to record with him on the 1997 duets album, Hank Thompson and Friends.

He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1989 and to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1997. He played his final show in Waco, the town of his birth on October 8, a date that was declared “Hank Thompson Day” by Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas.

Thompson's autobiography, My Side of Life, is scheduled for publication this month. He is survived by his wife, Ann.

Hank Thompson, country singer, was born on September 3, 1925. He died on November 6, 2007, aged 82