Louisiana-based televangelist Jimmy Swaggart — whose popularity peaked in the 80s — died Tuesday in a Baton Rouge hospital. He was 90.

Born in Ferriday, Louisiana, on March 15, 1935, Jimmy launched a full-time ministry in 1955, according to his website. Three years later, he released his first album, Some Golden Daybreak, and he went on to sell over 17 million records before founding the Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge in 1971.

Swaggart embodied the transition from traveling evangelist to radio preacher and then televangelist, garnering huge audiences along the way.