Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

Uncategorized

MERLE HAGGARD WAS RECOVERING FROM DOUBLE PNEUMONIA WHEN HE RECORDED “KERN RIVER BLUES.” IT BECAME THE LAST SONG HE EVER RECORDED. In his final months, illness kept forcing Merle Haggard off the road. Doctors wanted him resting. But even from a hospital bed, Merle kept writing songs. One of them was “Kern River Blues,” a look back at Bakersfield, Oildale, and a California he felt had changed since the days he knew it. On February 9, 2016, still recovering from double pneumonia, Merle went to his Hag Studio and recorded it. His son Ben played electric guitar beside him. It would become Merle’s final studio recording. Fifty-seven days later, on April 6, Merle died on his 79th birthday. There is something fitting about the way he left it: not with a grand farewell, but with another song about where he came from. What Merle Haggard song still sounds like it knows your life?

No Comments

Merle Haggard’s Final Recording Felt Like a Return Home In the last stretch of his life, Merle Haggard was doing…

Uncategorized

CHARLEY PRIDE TOOK “IS ANYBODY GOIN’ TO SAN ANTONE” TO NO. 1 IN 1970. DECADES LATER, HE COULD STILL MAKE THAT LONELY ROAD FEEL REAL. Charley Pride never needed to oversing a sad song. On “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” his voice carries the story of a man with nowhere much to go, hoping for a ride and trying to leave heartbreak behind. Released in 1970, the song reached No. 1 on the country chart and became one of Pride’s most recognizable recordings. Watch him perform it years later and there is still that same calm delivery. No big gestures. No unnecessary drama. Just Charley, standing at the microphone, making an old highway song sound like something that happened yesterday. Did you ever get to see Charley Pride perform this song?

No Comments

Charley Pride and the Road to “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone” Charley Pride never needed to oversing a sad…

Uncategorized

WHEN LORETTA LYNN DIED IN TENNESSEE, THE ROAD BACK TO BUTCHER HOLLOW STARTED FILLING WITH MEMORY. Loretta Lynn passed away on October 4, 2022, at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90. The world mourned the legend — the gowns, the hits, the banned songs, the woman who made country music tell the truth about marriage, motherhood, poverty, and survival. But in Kentucky, the grief had a different address. Governor Andy Beshear said it plainly: “Today, all of Kentucky mourns the loss of our very own Loretta Lynn.” He called her a legend who blazed a trail in country music while telling the stories of Appalachia and Kentucky. And that is why her death did not only feel like losing a star. It felt like the mountains had lost one of their own. The road of memory led back to Butcher Hollow, the coal-country hollow where Loretta Webb was born in a small cabin before anyone knew her name. Long before the awards, before “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” before Nashville learned how much truth one woman could fit into a song, there was that house, those hills, and a childhood with little money but plenty of memory. She died at the ranch she loved. But the story kept walking back to the cabin that made her.

No Comments

When Loretta Lynn Died in Tennessee, the Road Back to Butcher Hollow Started Filling with Memory On October 4, 2022,…

Uncategorized

ALAN JACKSON STOPPED TOURING. TWO DAYS LATER, PEOPLE PLAYED HIS MUSIC MORE THAN 8 MILLION TIMES. Alan Jackson’s final concert closed one chapter of a career that had lasted more than three decades. But the numbers that followed showed something important: people were not ready to stop listening. In the two days after his Nashville finale, Alan’s catalog drew more than 8.1 million streams, a jump of roughly 32 percent. Some of his songs climbed even higher as longtime fans went back to the records they had carried through marriages, children, losses and ordinary life. That may be the clearest measure of what Alan built. The road ended. The buses stopped. The farewell had been sung. But somewhere, someone was still pressing play on “Drive,” “Remember When,” or another song that had become part of their own story. Alan Jackson stopped touring. His music did not stop moving. When was the last time you put on an Alan Jackson song?

No Comments

Alan Jackson Stopped Touring, But His Music Kept Moving Alan Jackson’s final concert in Nashville felt like the close of…

Uncategorized

CHARLEY PRIDE SANG ON NATIONAL TV AT 86 — 31 DAYS LATER, COUNTRY MUSIC LOST HIM. On November 11, 2020, Charley Pride walked onto the CMA Awards stage to accept the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award. Then he sang “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin'” with Jimmie Allen. The room stood. The man who broke country music’s color line in 1966 — 29 No. 1 hits, the Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry — was still singing at 86. Nobody watching knew it was the last time. On December 12, 2020, Charley Pride died in Dallas from COVID-19 complications. The final voice on that stage belonged to a man who spent a lifetime being told he didn’t belong there. What did you feel the day you heard he was gone?

No Comments

Charley Pride Sang on National TV at 86 — 31 Days Later, Country Music Lost Him On November 11, 2020,…

Uncategorized

BILLY JOE SHAVER WAS READY TO GIVE UP ON NASHVILLE. THEN KRIS KRISTOFFERSON HEARD ONE OF HIS SONGS. Shaver had come to Nashville with a notebook full of songs and very little else. He had gotten Bobby Bare to listen to him and landed a writing job, but success still wasn’t coming. At one point, he was frustrated enough to consider leaving town altogether. Before he disappeared back to Texas, Bare helped put one of Shaver’s songs in front of Kris Kristofferson. The song was “Good Christian Soldier.” Kristofferson heard something in it that others had missed. He recorded it for his 1971 album The Silver Tongued Devil and I — one of the first major recordings of a Billy Joe Shaver song. For Shaver, it was more than a cut. It was proof that maybe he belonged in Nashville after all. Two years later, Kristofferson went even further: he produced Shaver’s first album, Old Five and Dimers Like Me.

No Comments

Billy Joe Shaver Was Ready to Give Up on Nashville. Then Kris Kristofferson Heard One of His Songs. Billy Joe…

Uncategorized

WHAT CHARLEY PRIDE LEFT BEHIND WASN’T FAME — IT WAS THE QUIET BELIEF THAT YOU ARE ENOUGH, JUST AS YOU ARE. When Charley Pride died at 86, the world remembered the hits, the awards, the warm baritone that could fill a room before he ever walked into it. But the thing he really left behind was steadier than any of that. He left behind a way of standing. He grew up picking cotton in the Mississippi Delta, one of eleven children of a sharecropper. He never pretended those years away. Fame came, and he stayed exactly the same man. “I used to pick cotton… even then I was somebody,” he said — the same feet, hands, and heart as anyone else. He never tried to be anybody’s copy, either. “I’m Charley Pride. I’m just me and that’s what you got.” That was the lesson he handed down to his children, and to anyone who listened close enough. Not ambition. Not applause. Just the stubborn certainty that you don’t need permission to be who you are. Time spent measuring yourself against someone else, he once said, was time better used elsewhere. He never told his children to prove anything. He told them to be themselves — and let that be enough. Which Charley Pride song still stops you in your tracks?

No Comments

What Charley Pride Left Behind Wasn’t Fame — It Was the Quiet Belief That You Are Enough, Just as You…

Uncategorized

EMMYLOU HARRIS WAS SEARCHING FOR SONGS AFTER GRAM PARSONS’ DEATH WHEN SHE HEARD A FIVE-SONG CASSETTE BY AN UNKNOWN TEXAS WRITER NAMED RODNEY CROWELL. ONE SONG CHANGED HIS LIFE — AND BEGAN A MUSICAL PARTNERSHIP THAT WOULD LAST FOR DECADES. Crowell had arrived in Nashville from Texas with songs but almost no reputation. Then Emmylou heard “Bluebird Wine.” She recorded it as the opening track of her 1975 album *Pieces of the Sky* and wanted to meet the man who had written it. Before long, Crowell was in her Hot Band, singing harmony and playing alongside musicians like James Burton and Glen D. Hardin. Emmylou kept recording his songs. Then everyone else started listening. Waylon Jennings cut “I Ain’t Living Long Like This.” The Oak Ridge Boys took “Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight” to No. 1. Crystal Gayle did the same with “‘Til I Gain Control Again.” Bob Seger carried “Shame on the Moon” to No. 2 on the pop chart. For years, Rodney Crowell songs were more famous than Rodney Crowell. Then *Diamonds & Dirt* produced five consecutive No. 1 country singles. Nearly forty years after that cassette, Crowell and Harris made *Old Yellow Moon* together. In 2014, it won the Grammy for Best Americana Album. The unknown songwriter Emmylou once brought into her band was now standing beside her as an equal partner.

No Comments

Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, and the Song That Changed Everything After Gram Parsons died, Emmylou Harris was still searching for…

Uncategorized

IN 1967, CRYSTAL GAYLE FILLED HER SISTER’S OPRY SPOT. FIFTY YEARS LATER, LORETTA CAME BACK TO INDUCT HER. Crystal Gayle was only 16 when Loretta Lynn got sick and couldn’t perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Loretta talked the Opry into letting her little sister take the spot instead. Crystal walked onto that famous stage wearing a shiny dress their mother had made and sang “Ribbon of Darkness.” She was still years away from “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and the 20 No. 1 country hits that would eventually carry her far beyond Loretta’s shadow. Then, on January 21, 2017, the circle closed. Crystal finally became an official Grand Ole Opry member. And standing there to induct her was Loretta. Fifty years earlier, Loretta had opened the door for her little sister. This time, she was there to watch Crystal walk through it for good.

No Comments

When Crystal Gayle Filled Loretta Lynn’s Opry Spot, a Family Story Began In country music, some moments feel bigger than…

Uncategorized

HE MET HER AT A DAIRY QUEEN. FORTY-SIX YEARS LATER, SHE’S STILL THE ONE HOLDING HIM UP. Alan Jackson was fifteen. Denise was seventeen. Newnan, Georgia, a parking lot, an ordinary afternoon. They married in 1979 — before the hits, before the hat, before anyone in Nashville knew his name. She worked as a flight attendant and put his demo into the right hands. She believed in him when believing in him wasn’t obvious. Then came the songs. The stadiums. Three daughters. A career built on singing about ordinary lives, written by a man who never stopped living one. In 2021 he told the world he has a nerve disease that’s slowly taking his balance. He’d been quiet about it for years. Standing on a stage — the thing he’d done ten thousand times — had become the hard part. He’s still touring. Slower now. Steadier when she’s near. The man who wrote “Remember When” is living the second half of it. Some artists spend a lifetime writing about love. He married his at seventeen and never had to look anywhere else for material.

No Comments

Alan Jackson, Denise Jackson, and a Love Story That Kept Its Balance Before the awards, before the arena lights, before…

You Missed

Uncategorized

John Denver Wrote “Annie’s Song” in 10 Minutes — But Annie Named a Different Song as Her Favorite

Uncategorized

People once expected Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard to clash. Nearly fifty years later, Kris stood at Merle’s funeral and sang him home. When they first met, Kris was the long-haired songwriter some in Nashville saw as a hippie. Merle was already one of country music’s biggest stars. People expected them to be at odds. Kris remembered it differently. “From the first handshake we were best friends,” he later said. That friendship lasted for decades. They toured together, and less than two months before Merle died, they were still sharing a stage in California. Merle died on April 6, 2016, his 79th birthday. Three days later, at his private funeral, Kris picked up his guitar and sang “Sing Me Back Home.” It was one of Merle’s most personal songs, drawn from his memories of San Quentin and a fellow inmate facing death. Nearly fifty years after that first handshake, the man everyone expected Merle to clash with was there for one of his final goodbyes.

Uncategorized

Hours before Buck Owens died, he was already walking toward his car because he felt too sick to perform. Then some fans from Oregon stopped him. Buck had eaten his favorite chicken-fried steak at the Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, but told his band he wasn’t feeling well enough to go onstage. On his way out, he met fans from Bend, Oregon, who told him how far they had traveled just to hear him sing. Buck turned around. “If somebody’s come all that way, I’m gonna do the show and give it my best shot,” longtime Buckaroo Jim Shaw remembered him telling the audience. Buck performed that night, then went home. A few hours later, he died in his sleep. He was 76. There had been no farewell announcement. No one knew they were watching his final show. Buck had been too sick to play. But when he heard how far those fans had come, he turned around and gave them the show. It turned out to be his last.

Uncategorized

CONWAY TWITTY FINISHED A SHOW IN BRANSON ON JUNE 4, 1993. BY THE NEXT MORNING, IT HAD BECOME HIS LAST. That Friday night, Conway was still doing what he had done for decades — standing in front of a country crowd and singing the songs that had made him one of Nashville’s biggest stars. After the show, he climbed aboard his tour bus for the trip back toward Tennessee. Nashville’s Fan Fair was ahead. He never made it. During a rest stop in southwest Missouri, Conway collapsed on the bus. He was rushed to a Springfield hospital, where doctors operated after an abdominal aneurysm ruptured. On June 5, Conway Twitty died from complications following surgery. He was 59. There had been no farewell tour. No announcement that Branson would be the last time. The audience had simply watched Conway Twitty sing, applauded, and gone home. By the next morning, they were part of a farewell none of them knew they had witnessed.