Country Music

ALAN JACKSON JUST REACHED 85.5 MILLION CERTIFIED UNITS — BUT HIS BIGGEST SONGS WERE NEVER ABOUT BEING RICH. The new RIAA milestone puts another enormous number beside Alan Jackson’s name. But listen to the songs people still carry with them, and money is almost never the point. “Drive” went back to memories of his father and an old boat. “Remember When” looked at a marriage that had survived good years and hard ones. “Where Were You” was about ordinary people trying to understand an unforgettable day. Even his songs about small towns, family and growing older sounded like they came from the same Georgia boy who once lived in a house built around his grandfather’s toolshed. Fame gave Alan cars, boats, awards and homes. But the songs that lasted were about the things money could never replace.

Alan Jackson Just Reached 85.5 Million Certified Units — But His Biggest Songs Were Never About Being Rich Alan Jackson…

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IN 1984, LORETTA LYNN WAS ON TOUR WHEN HER OLDEST SON DROWNED IN THE RIVER BEHIND HER HOUSE. SHE COLLAPSED UNCONSCIOUS BEFORE ANYONE COULD TELL HER. HER HUSBAND HAD TO FLY 600 MILES TO DELIVER THE NEWS IN PERSON. “He was her favorite. She never said it out loud. She didn’t have to.” At the time, Loretta was country music’s most beloved daughter — Coal Miner’s Daughter had been a No. 1 album, a Sissy Spacek Oscar, a household name. She’d already buried Patsy Cline. She’d already raised six kids on the road, written songs about pills and birth control and cheating husbands when nobody else would. Then July. Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. The ranch. Jack Benny was 34. He tried to cross the river on horseback. He hit his head on a rock. The rescue team pulled his body from the water on his mother’s own property. Loretta was on stage in Illinois when her body gave out. She woke up in a hospital, exhausted, with no idea why Doolittle had flown across two states to sit at her bedside. He told her in the room. Friends said something in her shifted that day and never came back. The migraines got worse. She’d had them since 17, bad enough to make her pull out her own hair, bad enough that one night the pain had pushed her close to taking her own life. After Jack Benny, the headaches stopped feeling like an illness. They started feeling like grief with nowhere to go. She kept performing. She kept writing. She buried her daughter Betty Sue years later, then her grandson, then Doolittle himself. But Loretta never talked much about that hospital room in Illinois. About what it felt like to wake up not knowing your son was already gone. About the days between collapsing on stage and finding out why. Those closest to her always wondered what part of her stayed behind in that river…

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Loretta Lynn, Loss, and the Day Her Life Changed in 1984 In July 1984, Loretta Lynn was already one of…

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SHE WATCHED HER MOTHER SCRUB CLOTHES ON A WASHBOARD UNTIL HER FINGERS BLED. YEARS LATER, LORETTA LYNN PUT THAT WOMAN INTO A SONG — AND MADE HER IMMORTAL. Loretta Webb was born in a cabin on a hill in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky. Her father, Ted Webb, mined coal at night and farmed corn by day. Her mother, Clara, did everything else. She scrubbed the family’s clothes on a washboard until her fingers bled. At night she rocked the babies and read the Bible by the light of a coal-oil lamp. Loretta married at fifteen. She had four children before she turned twenty. In 1969 she sat down at home and wrote it all out — the cabin, the coal dust, the washboard, the lamp. She called it “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” It went to No. 1 and became the song her whole life would be named after. But the coal miner in that title never heard a note of it. Ted Webb died in February 1959, at fifty-two — ten years before his daughter wrote the first line. Clara lived. She saw the song reach No. 1. She saw the movie made from it in 1980, and watched Sissy Spacek win an Academy Award for playing her daughter. In November 1981, Clara was admitted to a Nashville hospital. Loretta was midway through a two-week engagement in Las Vegas. She cancelled the last three nights and went to her. Clara died on November 24. She was sixty-nine.

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The Woman Behind Loretta Lynn’s Most Famous Song Long before Loretta Lynn became a legend, she was Loretta Webb, a…

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FORGET THE HALL OF FAME. FORGET THE AWARDS. LORETTA LYNN ONCE TOLD JACK WHITE THAT COUNTRY RADIO HAD BANNED 14 OF HER SONGS — AND SHE KEPT SINGING ABOUT THE THINGS WOMEN WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO SAY OUT LOUD. In 1972, Loretta became the first woman ever named CMA Entertainer of the Year. Her husband Doo missed the ceremony because he was out hunting. Then came “The Pill.” Loretta had recorded it in 1972, but MCA held it back until 1975. When it finally came out, roughly 60 radio stations refused to play it. A Kentucky preacher condemned it from the pulpit. Loretta kept singing it anyway. She later said the Grand Ole Opry held a three-hour meeting about whether she should be allowed to perform the song there. Her response was simple: if they banned her over it, they could keep the Opry too. Then doctors began telling her something radio had missed. Women in rural America were listening. Loretta wasn’t inventing controversy. She was singing about birth control, pregnancy, cheating husbands, divorce, and double standards that millions of women already understood. Radio decided what country music would play. Loretta Lynn decided what it would say. And every time they tried to silence one of those songs, they proved exactly why somebody needed to sing it.

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Forget the Awards. Loretta Lynn Sang What Women Were Told to Hide Loretta Lynn did not build her legacy by…

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1974 WAS THE FIRST TIME A SOLO SINGER EVER SANG THE NATIONAL ANTHEM AT THE SUPER BOWL — AND THAT SINGER WAS CHARLEY PRIDE. On January 13, 1974, more than 71,000 people filled Rice Stadium in Houston for Super Bowl VIII. Before the game, Charley Pride walked onto the field and sang “America the Beautiful,” followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner.” There was no giant production around him. Just a microphone and one of the most recognizable voices in country music. That alone would have been historic. But Pride carried something more. He was country music’s first Black superstar, a man who had spent years succeeding in a genre where almost nobody onstage looked like him. Now he was standing at the center of America’s biggest football game. He didn’t make a speech about breaking barriers. He simply sang. And decades before superstar anthem performances became a Super Bowl tradition, Charley Pride had already shown what one voice could mean.

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Charley Pride and the Quiet Power of a Super Bowl Moment On January 13, 1974, more than 71,000 fans filled…

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BEFORE AMERICAN IDOL, HER MOTHER DROVE HER TO TALENT SHOWS AND MADE HER STAGE CLOTHES. YEARS LATER, CARRIE UNDERWOOD PUT HER MAMA INSIDE A SONG. Carrie Underwood grew up in Checotah, Oklahoma, where her mother, Carole, recognized her voice before the rest of the world did. When Carrie entered local talent shows, Carole took her there and even made her costumes. Carrie once remembered a pair of one-dollar boots that her mother turned into stage shoes with sparkles and sequins. Then came the decision that changed everything. Carrie was talking herself out of auditioning for American Idol. Carole simply told her, “If you wanna go, I’ll take you.” Carrie went. In 2005, she won the show. Five years later, Carrie released “Mama’s Song,” which she co-wrote. Carole appeared in the music video alongside Carrie and her husband, Mike Fisher. The world remembers the night Carrie Underwood became an American Idol. But that road began earlier — with a mother willing to drive her daughter there.

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Before American Idol, Carrie Underwood’s Biggest Support Came from Home Long before Carrie Underwood became a household name, she was…

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IN 1994, CLINT BLACK, TANYA TUCKER, TRAVIS TRITT AND THE JUDDS OWNED THE SUPER BOWL HALFTIME STAGE. COUNTRY MUSIC HAS NEVER HAD IT TO ITSELF AGAIN. ERIC CHURCH WANTS 2030 TO CHANGE THAT. The last Super Bowl halftime show built entirely around country music happened in 1994. Since then, country has never had the stage to itself again. Shania Twain appeared in 2003, but shared the show with No Doubt and Sting. Eric Church wants Nashville to change that. He was part of the group that helped bring the 2030 Super Bowl to Nashville, where the game will be played at the new Nissan Stadium. And when asked about halftime, Church made one thing clear: he is not campaigning for himself. He is campaigning for country music. Church said he will do everything he can to make sure the genre has a place in that halftime show. Thirty-six years after country last owned the stage, Nashville may finally get the chance to bring it home.

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Eric Church’s Quiet Campaign Could Give Country Music the Super Bowl Stage Again in 2030 In 1994, country music had…

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HE WROTE THE WHOLE SONG HIMSELF — THEN GAVE AWAY HALF OF IT. IT SPENT 9 WEEKS AT NO. 2 IN 1959. Mel Tillis was a young songwriter with a stutter, carrying his songs from door to door. He had written “I Ain’t Never” by himself. Every word of it. He played it for Webb Pierce — one of the biggest stars in country music at the time. Pierce liked it. But the whole time Mel was singing, he kept looking down at the boots on Pierce’s feet. So Mel made him an offer. Pierce could put his own name on the song as co-writer — half of it — in exchange for one thing. Not money. The boots. Pierce took the deal. His record came out in 1959 and sat at No. 2 on the country chart for nine straight weeks, and crossed over to No. 24 on the pop chart. Thirteen years later, Mel finally cut it himself, and it became the first No. 1 record of his own career. Long after, somebody asked him about that trade. He said, “Them old boots cost me over eight hundred thousand dollars.”

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Mel Tillis, Webb Pierce, and the Song That Changed Hands for a Pair of Boots Mel Tillis was still building…

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In 1957, Mel Tillis sat in his living room in Florida, listening to Eddie Hill on WSM, and heard his own song come out of the radio in another man’s voice. He’d written it out in the field. He was nobody then — a strawberry picker, a milkman, a railroad fireman. The line just came to him. Oh Lord, I’m tired. Ray Price heard it down in Tampa and carried it up to Nashville. Webb Pierce asked if he could have it. Ray said no. He was cutting it himself. So Pierce did something else. He remembered the first verse, walked into Cedarwood — the publishing company he co-owned — and had a staff writer make up two new verses. Then he recorded it. It went to No. 3. Mel didn’t make a scene. He took the writing job Pierce offered him at Cedarwood and kept working. “I Ain’t Never.” “Tupelo County Jail.” “Honky Tonk Song.” Every one of them went to Pierce. Then in 1983, Mel Tillis bought Cedarwood. Not a share of it. The whole company.

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The Song That Came Back in Another Voice In the late 1950s, Mel Tillis was still building a life from…

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THEY CALLED HIM “THE VOICE.” AT 74, AFTER TWO STROKES AND A BYPASS, HE WAS STILL IN HIS DRIVEWAY FIXING THE TOUR BUS. THREE WEEKS LATER, THE BUS HADN’T MOVED — BUT VERN GOSDIN HAD. In the 1970s, Vern Gosdin quit music. Moved to Georgia. Sold glass for a living. Everyone assumed the story was over. But he kept a guitar in his truck — and a man who keeps a guitar in his truck hasn’t quit anything. He came back. 19 top-10 hits. Three number ones. CMA Song of the Year. Tammy Wynette called him “the only singer who can hold a candle to George Jones.” Nashville didn’t call him talented. They called him “The Voice” — because they ran out of smaller words. Then the ’90s changed the sound. Nashville moved on. A stroke in ’98 took his strength. He kept writing. Kept recording. At 73, he released a 101-song box set — then started rebuilding his tour bus for one more summer. Three weeks before the comeback, the final stroke came. April 28, 2009. The bus never left the driveway. People measure legends by their final bow. But Gosdin’s greatness wasn’t in the exit — it was in the fact that at 74, after everything Nashville took from him, he was still packing for the road. He never made it into the Hall of Fame. But “The Voice” never needed a building to echo in. It just needed one more song. And Vern Gosdin always believed there was one more.

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Vern Gosdin: The Voice That Kept Packing for One More Song They called Vern Gosdin “The Voice,” and once you…

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