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In 1972 Johnny Cash wrote a song about a sick old chief who died in the snow, and almost nobody heard it. Thirty-three years later, a guitar player from his band brought it back. The chief was Spotted Elk of the Miniconjou Lakota. Soldiers called him Big Foot. In December 1890 he was about 64 years old and burning with fever when he led his people toward Pine Ridge in South Dakota. The 7th Cavalry stopped them and marched them to Wounded Knee Creek. On the morning of December 29, the soldiers began taking the camp’s weapons, and the shooting started. Big Foot was among the first to die. Several hundred Lakota were killed with him, many of them women and children. Cash put “Big Foot” on his 1972 album America. It was never released as a single. Marty Stuart first came to Pine Ridge in the early 1980s, playing guitar in Cash’s band. He kept returning for twenty years, until the Lakota adopted him. In 2005 he recorded “Big Foot” himself.

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The Song Johnny Cash Hid in Plain Sight In 1972, Johnny Cash released an album called America and included a…

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Merle Haggard was born in a railroad boxcar, and the song people love most from him is set in a place his family never lived. His parents, James and Flossie, walked away from an Oklahoma farm during the Dust Bowl and ended up in Oildale, California. James was a railroad carpenter. He turned an abandoned 40-foot boxcar into a house, and Merle was born there on April 6, 1937. James died of a stroke in 1946. Merle was nine. Flossie took a bookkeeping job and raised three children by herself. Haggard carried the title “Hungry Eyes” in his head for two years before he knew what to put under it. What he finally wrote was a Depression labor camp: a mother who asked only for what she needed, a father who worked hard and still came up short. The cabin in that song was real. It belonged to his great-uncle Escar and great-aunt Willie, where Merle was sent to stay after his father died. He recorded it on December 9, 1968. It reached No. 1 on May 10, 1969.

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Merle Haggard: Born in a Boxcar, Framed by a Song That Came From Real Life Merle Haggard’s story begins with…

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Before Rodney Crowell had five No. 1 country hits of his own, Emmylou Harris was already recording his songs — and then asked the unknown Texas songwriter to join one of the best bands in country music. Crowell had moved to Nashville in 1972, trying to make his name as a songwriter. A few years later, producer Brian Ahern brought one of his songs, “Bluebird Wine,” to Harris while she was preparing her 1975 album Pieces of the Sky. She recorded it. More importantly, she heard something in the young writer that most of the country audience had not heard yet. Harris invited Crowell to Los Angeles to join her newly formed Hot Band. Suddenly, he was working alongside musicians such as James Burton and Glen D. Hardin while singing and playing behind one of country music’s fastest-rising stars. Harris kept recording his songs, including “‘Til I Gain Control Again,” giving Crowell’s writing an audience long before his own records became major hits. Crowell left the Hot Band to pursue his own career, but success as a singer took time. Then his 1988 album Diamonds & Dirt produced an extraordinary five No. 1 country singles. By then, America finally knew Rodney Crowell’s voice. Emmylou Harris had recognized the songwriter years earlier — when most people still didn’t know his name.

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How Emmylou Harris Saw Rodney Crowell Before the Rest of Country Music Did Before Rodney Crowell became a chart-topping solo…

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Buck Owens and Bonnie Owens were divorced by 1953, but the part country music often gets wrong is what happened afterward: they never became enemies. They had married young in 1948 and soon had two sons, Buddy and Michael. By 1951, the marriage was no longer working. Money was so tight that they remained legally married for a time simply because they could not afford the divorce. Yet Bonnie later said they agreed on the one thing that mattered most — making sure their boys grew up well. “It was a friendly parting,” she remembered. Years later, people would claim Merle Haggard had stolen Buck’s wife. Buck rejected that story completely. He and Bonnie had been divorced for years before she even met Merle, whom she eventually married in 1965. Buck said there had never been “a cross word or a cross thought” between them. And the friendship lasted. A couple of years before Bonnie died, Alzheimer’s had already taken much of her memory when she joined Buck for a duet at his Crystal Palace. She could no longer remember the words to her own songs. Buck watched the woman he had known since they were teenagers struggle beside him — and a friend remembered that he was devastated. Their marriage lasted only a few years. Their affection for each other lasted almost a lifetime.

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Buck Owens and Bonnie Owens: A Divorce, a Friendship, and the Story Country Music Often Gets Wrong In country music…

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They divorced in 1970 — then quietly married each other again before the year was over. Conway Twitty and Temple “Mickey” Medley had been together since 1956, long before Conway became one of country music’s biggest stars. They raised three children together, while his career kept growing and the road kept pulling him away. Mickey later remembered how difficult those early years became after “It’s Only Make Believe” exploded in 1958. She was home with small children while Conway suddenly had the career he had dreamed about. By early 1970, the strain was enough for them to divorce. But separation apparently did not erase what was still between them. Before 1970 ended, Conway and Mickey quietly remarried and tried again. This time they stayed together for another 14 years. But Conway’s life only became busier. By the mid-1980s, he was reportedly making around 200 personal appearances a year while running a growing business empire. Their marriage finally ended for good in 1984. Some couples discover after a divorce that they were right to leave. Conway and Mickey discovered they loved each other enough to come back — even if love alone could not make the second chance last forever.

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Conway Twitty and Temple “Mickey” Medley: A Love Story That Refused to End Quietly Some marriages end with a clean…

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EVERYONE BLAMED THE ROAD. NEITHER OF THEM EVER DID. The story people tell about Kenny Rogers and Marianne Gordon is that touring took the marriage. Rogers told it differently. He said things were fine until their son Christopher was born in 1981, because that was when Gordon stopped traveling with him and stayed home with the baby, and by the time he came off the road their lives no longer fit together. He added that he did not want Christopher carrying any blame for that. Gordon pointed somewhere else entirely. She said that once Rogers turned 50 she no longer had his full attention, though he clearly still wanted her there. He told her he felt he was in a midlife crisis and that his career was fading out from under him. They divorced in 1993 after sixteen years. She reportedly received around $60 million, one of the largest settlements of its era, and neither of them contested it. He said publicly that she had earned it. When she spoke about him after his death in 2020, she had to fight back tears. “For 17 of 21 years, every day, he was so sweet.”

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Everyone Blamed the Road. Neither of Them Ever Did. For years, people told the same simple story about Kenny Rogers…

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“Rockin’ Years,” her duet with Ricky Van Shelton, reached No. 1 in 1991. It was Dolly Parton’s twenty-fourth. It was also her last chart-topper until 2006. Country radio kept moving away from her through the 1990s, even as her albums went on selling. Then, in early 1999, Decca closed its Nashville office — leaving her without a record label for the second time in a single year. That July she had dinner with her longtime producer, Steve Buckingham. He told her that when bluegrass fans were asked which artist they most wanted to hear make a bluegrass record, they overwhelmingly named her. She told Billboard they were both shocked — then she realized she managed herself now and had her own label, so there was nothing to stop her. The whole album was recorded in Nashville by the end of August. Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, Bryan Sutton, Jim Mills and Barry Bales came to play. Alison Krauss, Patty Loveless, Rhonda Vincent, Claire Lynch and Dan Tyminski came to sing. The Grass Is Blue reached No. 198 on the Billboard 200. It won the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album, and the International Bluegrass Music Association named it Album of the Year.

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Dolly Parton’s Bluegrass Turn That Changed the Conversation By the early 1990s, Dolly Parton was still one of country music’s…

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Bill Anderson wrote “City Lights,” a country No. 1 for Ray Price in 1958, when he was 19. He had his own hits through the 1960s and 1970s. Then the 1980s came, and he spent them hosting a network game show and speaking for a restaurant chain. He later explained it simply: he didn’t write much anymore because he didn’t feel what he wanted to write related to what young listeners wanted to hear. The way back started in 1992, when Steve Wariner recorded one of his old songs, “Tips of My Fingers.” The exposure pushed Anderson to try co-writing, and in 1994 he sat down with Vince Gill. In 1999, “Wish You Were Here” became Mark Wills’ first No. 1. Then Brad Paisley called. A morning television show had turned Paisley down for being too country. Anderson and Chuck Cannon had written a song with that exact title. Paisley put it on his 2001 album Part II — and brought in George Jones, Buck Owens, and Anderson himself. It was never a single. Radio played it anyway, and it entered the country chart on unsolicited airplay. On November 7, 2001, at the Grand Ole Opry House, “Too Country” won the CMA award for the year’s best vocal event. That same year, Anderson was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He called the record one of the true highlights of his career.

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Bill Anderson and the Quiet Return of a Country Storyteller Bill Anderson’s career has always felt like one long conversation…

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December 2, 1982. Chest pains. Marty Robbins was admitted to St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville. A blood clot had closed off a major artery in his heart. Surgeons opened him up for an emergency quadruple bypass, repairing the one he had received in January 1970 — back when the operation was still experimental. Six days later he was gone. He was 57. He had entered the Country Music Hall of Fame that October. He held it for two months. “El Paso” had won the first Grammy ever given to a country song. But none of that is what his son inherited. Ronny was 33. He had already cut a record for Columbia — released under the name Marty Robbins Jr. When the two of them sang together on television, listeners could not tell the voices apart. That was the inheritance, and that was the trap. A man who sounds exactly like his father can spend a lifetime being a copy. So Ronny stepped off the road. He stopped chasing a career of his own and took over his father’s company instead, and he has spent the decades since keeping the catalog alive. He still sings “El Paso” on television. Same voice. Some sons spend an inheritance. Ronny guarded his.

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Marty Robbins, Ronny Robbins, and the Voice That Carried a Legacy On December 2, 1982, Marty Robbins was admitted to…

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AFTER CHARLIE DANIELS DIED, A NAVY VETERAN DRAPED AN AMERICAN FLAG OVER HIS BODY. THEN THE HALLWAYS FILLED WITH PEOPLE. Charlie Daniels died on July 6, 2020, at 83 after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke. Before his body left the hospital, staff arranged what his family later described as a “Patriots Honor Walk.” A nurse who had served in the U.S. Navy brought an American flag and draped it over Charlie. Hospital employees stood along the hallway as he was taken out for the final time. Outside, police escorted the procession toward Mount Juliet. Along the route, people waited with flags and handmade signs to say goodbye. Charlie had spent years supporting veterans and military families through his Journey Home Project. In the end, the people he had tried to honor for so long found a quiet way to honor him back.

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When Charlie Daniels Left the Hospital, a Quiet Hallway Became a Final Salute On July 6, 2020, Charlie Daniels died…

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