Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

THEY GATHERED AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY TO SAY GOODBYE. ALAN JACKSON SANG THE SONG HE HAD WRITTEN FOR HIS OWN MOTHER. Loretta Lynn had come out of a Kentucky coal camp with almost nothing. She married young, raised children while still barely grown herself, learned guitar on a seventeen-dollar instrument, and eventually made country radio hear things women were not supposed to say out loud. Marriage. Poverty. Cheating. Birth control. Anger. Survival. On October 4, 2022, Loretta died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90. Twenty-six days later, her family, friends and fans gathered at the Grand Ole Opry House for a public celebration of her life. George Strait sang “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’,” Loretta’s first No. 1 hit. Tanya Tucker sang “Blue Kentucky Girl.” Keith Urban played a voicemail Loretta had once left him before singing “You’re Lookin’ at Country.” Then Alan Jackson walked onto the stage. He did not choose one of Loretta’s hits. He chose “Where Her Heart Has Always Been,” the song he had written after losing his own mother. Before singing, Alan explained that Loretta had always reminded him of her — both women were sweet, genuine, outgoing, and never afraid to tell you exactly what they thought. For decades, America knew Loretta Lynn as the Coal Miner’s Daughter. That night, Alan Jackson remembered something simpler. She reminded him of Mom.

No Comments

When the Grand Ole Opry Said Goodbye to Loretta Lynn On October 4, 2022, Loretta Lynn died at her home…

Uncategorized

PORTER WAGONER HADN’T PUT AN ALBUM ON THE BILLBOARD COUNTRY CHART IN 24 YEARS. AT 79, MARTY STUART HELPED HIM DO IT ONE LAST TIME. In 2006, Porter Wagoner survived a near-fatal aortic aneurysm that kept him away from the Grand Ole Opry for seven months. He came back anyway. Marty Stuart, who had grown up watching Porter on television, took his childhood hero into the studio and produced *Wagonmaster*. Released in June 2007, it became Porter’s first album to reach the Billboard country album chart since 1983. Then something even less expected happened. That July, the 79-year-old country veteran in his rhinestone suits walked onto the stage at Madison Square Garden as the opening act for the White Stripes. Young fans who had never seen *The Porter Wagoner Show* were suddenly cheering him. Porter finally saw his music reach a new generation. On October 28, 2007, he died from lung cancer at 80. His comeback had lasted only a few months. But he lived long enough to see it happen.

No Comments

Porter Wagoner’s Last Chart Moment, and the Artist Who Helped Make It Happen By the time Porter Wagoner returned to…

Uncategorized

KENNY ROGERS DIED ON MARCH 20, 2020. SEVEN DAYS LATER, COUNTRY RADIO RECEIVED AN UNEARTHED RECORDING CALLED “GOODBYE.” Kenny Rogers died at his home in Georgia at 81, surrounded by his family. One week later, on March 27, Capitol Nashville sent country radio a little-known recording from Kenny’s past. The song was called “Goodbye.” Written by Lionel Richie, it had been recorded by Kenny years earlier but was never one of the songs most fans associated with him. After his death, those closest to Kenny decided people should hear it again. Suddenly, the words carried a different weight. Kenny sang about finding peace in where someone has gone, hearing their laughter again in memory, and being grateful they had come into his life. It was not recorded as Kenny Rogers’ final message. But seven days after his death, that was how it felt. Three years later, “Goodbye” became the closing track of his posthumous album “Life Is Like a Song” — leaving Kenny’s own voice to deliver one last farewell.

No Comments

Kenny Rogers, “Goodbye,” and the Song That Found a New Meaning Kenny Rogers died on March 20, 2020, at his…

Uncategorized

JIM REEVES LEFT BEHIND A SIMPLE DEMO. TWO YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, RCA BUILT A RECORD AROUND HIS VOICE — AND IT WENT TO NO. 1 ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC. Before his death, Jim Reeves recorded “Distant Drums,” a Cindy Walker song, as a simple demo rather than a finished commercial master. Then, on July 31, 1964, Reeves was killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed near Nashville. He was only 40. But his voice was still sitting on tape. After his death, RCA took that vocal, added new instrumental backing, and released “Distant Drums” in 1966. The result was bigger than anyone could have expected. “Distant Drums” spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart. Then it crossed the Atlantic and became Reeves’ only UK No. 1, holding the top spot for five weeks. Nearly two years after Jim Reeves was gone, a voice he had left on a demo tape gave him one of the biggest records of his career.

No Comments

Jim Reeves, “Distant Drums,” and the Song That Kept Going Sometimes a record arrives not as a grand statement, but…

Uncategorized

TOBY KEITH SAVED A PIECE OF AMERICA — AND DIDN’T LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO SEE HOW MUCH IT MEANT. In 2023, Toby Keith quietly stepped in when the legendary Missouri fishing brand Luck E Strike was on the brink of disappearing. For Toby Keith, it wasn’t just a business deal. It was personal. The brand had been part of American fishing culture since 1970, tied to memories of small lakes, early mornings, and voices like Jimmy Houston teaching a generation how to fish. Toby Keith refused to let that piece of Americana vanish. He brought production back to Cassville, Missouri, insisting the lures be made by American workers. Toby Keith even invited longtime friend Jimmy Houston to help guide the revival, keeping the classic designs alive while modernizing the brand. Toby Keith believed fishing should remain something ordinary people could afford and enjoy. That philosophy shaped everything about the revival. Less than a year later, Toby Keith was gone. But every lure cast into the water today still carries a small part of that promise.

No Comments

Toby Keith and the Quiet Revival of Luck E Strike In the world of fishing, some names feel larger than…

Uncategorized

IN 1967 THEY WORRIED THE CROWD WOULD WALK OUT WHEN HE STEPPED ON THAT STAGE. THIS SEPTEMBER, THE OPRY IS GIVING HIM THE WHOLE NIGHT. Charley Pride grew up in Sledge, Mississippi, listening to the Opry on WSM radio while his family picked cotton. That stage was the furthest thing in the world from a Black kid in the Delta in the 1940s. He made his Opry debut in 1967 anyway. He didn’t become a member until 1993 — he’d turned down an earlier invitation because he was on the road too much. He died on December 12, 2020, at 86. On September 22, the Grand Ole Opry will hand him an entire evening. Opry 100 Honors Charley Pride. Darius Rucker will be there — the man who once said the only reason he gets to stand on that stage is Charley’s courage. Pam Tillis. Neal McCoy. And Dion Pride, his son, singing his father’s songs in the building his father grew up dreaming about. The boy who listened to that stage through a radio in Mississippi is getting the stage to himself. It only took a hundred years of the Opry to get here. Which Charley Pride song does your family still play?

No Comments

Charley Pride Is Finally Getting the Whole Night He Earned Before the spotlight, before the accolades, before the Hall of…

Uncategorized

CHARLIE AND IRA LOUVIN SANG THE CLOSEST HARMONY ANYBODY IN COUNTRY MUSIC HAD EVER HEARD. WHEN IRA DIED, THE TWO BROTHERS HAD NOT SUNG A NOTE TOGETHER IN TWO YEARS. They were farm boys out of Section, Alabama — Ira’s high tenor riding above Charlie’s lead on hymns and heartbreak songs, the sound that would later shape the Everly Brothers, Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris. But Ira drank, and Ira had a temper. In 1963 his third wife shot him during a fight. He survived. That same year, Charlie walked away and the brothers each went out on their own. Early on the morning of June 20, 1965, Ira and his fourth wife Anne were driving home to Alabama after a show in Kansas City. Outside Williamsburg, Missouri, Highway 70 was under construction and traffic had been squeezed down to one lane. A drunk driver hit them head-on. Six people in the two cars were killed. Ira died at the scene, one mile east of town. He was 41. Anne was 38 and died on the way to the hospital. At that moment, there was a warrant out for Ira’s own arrest — for driving drunk. That night, Charlie was standing on a stage in West Virginia. He kept singing the old Louvin songs for the next forty-five years. In 2001 the Louvin Brothers were voted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, thirty-six years too late for Ira to hear it. Charlie died in 2011, at 83.

No Comments

Charlie and Ira Louvin: The Harmony That Outlived the Brothers There are voices that blend, and then there are voices…

Uncategorized

RONNIE MILSAP SAID HIS ONLY SON WAS A FORCE OF JOY AND LIFE FROM THE MOMENT HE WAS BORN. Ronald Todd Milsap never wanted the stage his father had. He grew up in Nashville, went to school there, and worked for the family from behind the curtain — helping plan the tours, the recording sessions, the videos. He kept a houseboat on Percy Priest Lake, east of town. He had three children of his own. On the morning of Saturday, February 23, 2019, Todd’s son drove out to the Four Corners Marina in Antioch, Tennessee. He hadn’t heard from his father in two days. He found him dead on the boat. Todd was 49. Police said there was no foul play — the death appeared to be medical. That same morning, the marina was under a mandatory evacuation order. The lake was flooding. Ronnie was 76 years old and had been blind nearly all his life. His mother gave him up as a baby. His grandparents raised him in a house in the Smoky Mountains with no electricity and no running water, then sent him across the state at six to a school for the blind, where a teacher’s blow took the last of the sight in his left eye. He built six Grammys out of songs about longing and loss. He asked people to pray for Todd’s three children, their mothers, and for Joyce. Two years later, in September 2021, Joyce was gone too, after fifty-four years of marriage.

No Comments

Ronnie Milsap, Todd Milsap, and a Family Story of Love, Work, and Loss Ronnie Milsap built a career on songs…

Uncategorized

LORETTA LYNN ONCE WROTE THAT IF SHE DIDN’T KNOW BETTER, SHE’D HAVE SWORN HER OLDEST SON WAS BORN ON A HORSE. She was remembering Jack Benny Lynn decades after she lost him. He was quiet, she said, an outdoorsman, the picture of his daddy, and he would put anybody he could up in a saddle. He had no interest in Nashville. He shoed and trained horses at the family’s Hurricane Mills ranch in Tennessee, and he was raising a small daughter and two teenagers of his own. On July 22, 1984, Jack tried to ford the Duck River on horseback. He was 34. Searchers recovered his body two days later and found his horse alive, trapped on a steep bank near the spot. Loretta did not know yet. She had already collapsed from exhaustion on the road in Illinois and was lying in a hospital bed there, so her husband drove north and told her himself. She had spent a career turning the worst of her life into songs — the poverty, the marriage, the friends she buried far too young. She never wrote one for Jack. Her family later said that particular pain hurt too much to put into a verse, so every July for the rest of her days she wrote about him publicly instead, and she asked her team to keep doing it after she was gone. He rests in the family cemetery on the hill at Hurricane Mills, where Loretta herself was laid to rest in 2022.

No Comments

Loretta Lynn and the Son She Never Sang About There are some losses that a person can only circle, never…

Uncategorized

THE WOMAN WHO SOLD MORE THAN 45 MILLION RECORDS — AND NEVER STOPPED CALLING HERSELF A COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER. Loretta Lynn could have left Butcher Hollow behind forever. Instead, the coal miner’s daughter spent her life carrying it with her. She grew up in a Kentucky cabin, one of eight children, with little money and no easy path to Nashville. Fame eventually brought what poverty never had: hit records, awards, buses, television appearances and a sprawling Tennessee ranch. But Loretta never stopped talking like the woman who came from the hollow. She sang about marriage, babies, bills, jealousy and hard work because those were the things she actually knew. Even after becoming one of country music’s biggest stars, she kept returning to family, home cooking, old stories and the people who knew her before the gowns and trophies. More than 45 million records sold. Four Grammys. The Country Music Hall of Fame. The world turned Loretta Lynn into an icon. She never stopped calling herself a coal miner’s daughter.

No Comments

The Woman Who Sold More Than 45 Million Records — and Never Stopped Calling Herself a Coal Miner’s Daughter Loretta…

You Missed

Uncategorized

THEY GATHERED AT THE GRAND OLE OPRY TO SAY GOODBYE. ALAN JACKSON SANG THE SONG HE HAD WRITTEN FOR HIS OWN MOTHER. Loretta Lynn had come out of a Kentucky coal camp with almost nothing. She married young, raised children while still barely grown herself, learned guitar on a seventeen-dollar instrument, and eventually made country radio hear things women were not supposed to say out loud. Marriage. Poverty. Cheating. Birth control. Anger. Survival. On October 4, 2022, Loretta died at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90. Twenty-six days later, her family, friends and fans gathered at the Grand Ole Opry House for a public celebration of her life. George Strait sang “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’,” Loretta’s first No. 1 hit. Tanya Tucker sang “Blue Kentucky Girl.” Keith Urban played a voicemail Loretta had once left him before singing “You’re Lookin’ at Country.” Then Alan Jackson walked onto the stage. He did not choose one of Loretta’s hits. He chose “Where Her Heart Has Always Been,” the song he had written after losing his own mother. Before singing, Alan explained that Loretta had always reminded him of her — both women were sweet, genuine, outgoing, and never afraid to tell you exactly what they thought. For decades, America knew Loretta Lynn as the Coal Miner’s Daughter. That night, Alan Jackson remembered something simpler. She reminded him of Mom.

Uncategorized

PORTER WAGONER HADN’T PUT AN ALBUM ON THE BILLBOARD COUNTRY CHART IN 24 YEARS. AT 79, MARTY STUART HELPED HIM DO IT ONE LAST TIME. In 2006, Porter Wagoner survived a near-fatal aortic aneurysm that kept him away from the Grand Ole Opry for seven months. He came back anyway. Marty Stuart, who had grown up watching Porter on television, took his childhood hero into the studio and produced *Wagonmaster*. Released in June 2007, it became Porter’s first album to reach the Billboard country album chart since 1983. Then something even less expected happened. That July, the 79-year-old country veteran in his rhinestone suits walked onto the stage at Madison Square Garden as the opening act for the White Stripes. Young fans who had never seen *The Porter Wagoner Show* were suddenly cheering him. Porter finally saw his music reach a new generation. On October 28, 2007, he died from lung cancer at 80. His comeback had lasted only a few months. But he lived long enough to see it happen.

Uncategorized

KENNY ROGERS DIED ON MARCH 20, 2020. SEVEN DAYS LATER, COUNTRY RADIO RECEIVED AN UNEARTHED RECORDING CALLED “GOODBYE.” Kenny Rogers died at his home in Georgia at 81, surrounded by his family. One week later, on March 27, Capitol Nashville sent country radio a little-known recording from Kenny’s past. The song was called “Goodbye.” Written by Lionel Richie, it had been recorded by Kenny years earlier but was never one of the songs most fans associated with him. After his death, those closest to Kenny decided people should hear it again. Suddenly, the words carried a different weight. Kenny sang about finding peace in where someone has gone, hearing their laughter again in memory, and being grateful they had come into his life. It was not recorded as Kenny Rogers’ final message. But seven days after his death, that was how it felt. Three years later, “Goodbye” became the closing track of his posthumous album “Life Is Like a Song” — leaving Kenny’s own voice to deliver one last farewell.

Uncategorized

JIM REEVES LEFT BEHIND A SIMPLE DEMO. TWO YEARS AFTER HIS DEATH, RCA BUILT A RECORD AROUND HIS VOICE — AND IT WENT TO NO. 1 ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC. Before his death, Jim Reeves recorded “Distant Drums,” a Cindy Walker song, as a simple demo rather than a finished commercial master. Then, on July 31, 1964, Reeves was killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed near Nashville. He was only 40. But his voice was still sitting on tape. After his death, RCA took that vocal, added new instrumental backing, and released “Distant Drums” in 1966. The result was bigger than anyone could have expected. “Distant Drums” spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart. Then it crossed the Atlantic and became Reeves’ only UK No. 1, holding the top spot for five weeks. Nearly two years after Jim Reeves was gone, a voice he had left on a demo tape gave him one of the biggest records of his career.