Country Music

Country Music Hits

Uncategorized

“SET ’EM UP JOE” WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT VERN GOSDIN. AFTER VERN GOSDIN DIED, IT SOMEHOW BECAME THE PERFECT GOODBYE. When Vern Gosdin recorded “Set ’Em Up Joe,” he was singing for Ernest Tubb and every lonely voice that came before him. It was a song about sitting in a bar, feeding quarters into a jukebox, and trying not to fall apart. But after Vern Gosdin died in 2009, fans heard it differently. Suddenly, the man singing about old country legends had become one himself. “Set ’em up, Joe, and play ‘Walkin’ the Floor.’” The line sounded less like a request and more like Vern Gosdin quietly taking his place beside the artists he had always loved. He spent his whole life singing about heartbreak, memory, and people who never really leave. And somehow, in the end, Vern Gosdin left behind the one song that now feels like country music saying goodbye to him. What most people never knew was that Vern Gosdin did not choose “Set ’Em Up Joe” just because he loved the song — he chose it because of the one country legend he could never stop missing, and the story behind that choice made the ending feel even sadder.

No Comments

“Set ’Em Up Joe” Was Never Meant to Be Vern Gosdin’s Goodbye When Vern Gosdin recorded “Set ’Em Up Joe,”…

Uncategorized

CHARLEY PRIDE HAD 29 NO. 1 COUNTRY HITS. BUT ONE SIMPLE 1971 LOVE SONG BECAME THE RECORD PEOPLE NEVER STOPPED ASKING HIM TO SING. Charley Pride didn’t need a dramatic performance to make “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” work. Written by Ben Peters, the song became one of Pride’s No. 1 country hits and one of the records most closely associated with his remarkable career. Watch Charley sing it years later. The easy smile is still there. So is that warm, unmistakable voice. He doesn’t push the words or try to make the moment bigger than it is. He simply sings about loving the person waiting for you at home — and somehow, coming from Charley Pride, that simple idea feels like enough. Did you ever get to see Charley Pride perform this song?

No Comments

Charley Pride and the Song That Never Let Go Charley Pride had a career full of milestones, but some songs…

Uncategorized

GEORGE JONES THOUGHT NOBODY WOULD BUY IT. IN 1980, IT BECAME ONE OF THE DEFINING SONGS OF HIS CAREER. George Jones never needed to act heartbroken when he sang “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” His voice already carried enough history. When producer Billy Sherrill brought him the song, Jones reportedly thought it was too sad to become a hit. But he recorded it anyway. Released in 1980, it reached No. 1 on the country chart and helped revive a career many believed was slipping away. It also earned Jones a Grammy. Years later, watching him sing it was different. He barely moved. He simply stood at the microphone and let every tired crack in that famous voice do the work. It didn’t sound like acting anymore. It sounded remembered. When was the last time you watched George Jones perform?

No Comments

George Jones Thought Nobody Would Buy It. In 1980, It Became One of the Defining Songs of His Career. George…

Uncategorized

LORETTA LYNN SURVIVED A STROKE AT 85 — THEN RELEASED HER 50TH ALBUM AND CALLED IT “STILL WOMAN ENOUGH.” In 2017, a stroke took her off the road. A broken hip followed a year later. Nashville quietly assumed the Coal Miner’s Daughter was done. She wasn’t. In March 2021, at 88, Loretta Lynn released her 50th studio album — sixty-one years after her first single. She titled it “Still Woman Enough.” She was still writing. Still recording. Still proving everyone wrong. Then, on October 4, 2022, Loretta Lynn died in her sleep at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee. She was 90. The title of that last album suddenly meant something else entirely. How did it feel the day you heard she was gone?

No Comments

Loretta Lynn, Still Woman Enough When people talk about Loretta Lynn, they often talk about survival first. She survived poverty,…

Uncategorized

PATSY CLINE RECORDED 4 SONGS IN FEBRUARY 1963 — SHE HAD 29 DAYS LEFT. In early 1963, Patsy Cline was the biggest woman in country music. That February, she walked into a Nashville studio and cut four more songs. One of them was “Faded Love.” On the final line, her voice broke — and Owen Bradley kept it in. At 30, she was still recording. Still touring. Still making plans. Then, on March 5, 1963, her plane went down in the Tennessee woods on the way home from a benefit show. Dottie West had begged her to ride back by car. Patsy told her, “Don’t worry about me, Hoss.” What did you feel the first time you heard how that recording ends?

No Comments

Patsy Cline, February 1963, and the Last Song That Stayed Open at the End In early 1963, Patsy Cline was…

Uncategorized

BILLY JOE SHAVER SHOT A MAN OUTSIDE A TEXAS BAR. THREE YEARS LATER, A JURY CLEARED HIM — AND HE TURNED THE WHOLE THING INTO A COUNTRY SONG. On March 31, 2007, Billy Joe Shaver got into a confrontation with Billy Coker at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena, Texas. The argument moved outside. Shaver pulled a handgun and shot Coker. Shaver later said he believed Coker was threatening him and that he fired in self-defense. The case followed him for three years. In April 2010, a Texas jury heard the evidence and found Shaver not guilty of aggravated assault. Willie Nelson and actor Robert Duvall were among the friends who came to support him during the trial. Most singers would have wanted the story forgotten. Billy Joe Shaver did the opposite. He took one of the most dangerous nights of his life and turned it into a song — even recording it with his old friend Willie Nelson. For Shaver, being called an outlaw was never just a stage image.

No Comments

Billy Joe Shaver, the Texas Outlaw Who Turned a Shooting Into a Song On a spring night in Texas, Billy…

Uncategorized

CHARLEY PRIDE FIRST WALKED ONTO THE OPRY STAGE IN 1967. FIFTY-NINE YEARS LATER, THEY’RE BUILDING A NIGHT AROUND HIS SONGS. Charley Pride grew up in Sledge, Mississippi, listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio long before Nashville knew his name. By 1967, he had made it onto the stage he once heard from miles away. He became an Opry member in 1993 and spent the rest of his life as one of country music’s most important voices. Charley died in 2020 at 86, but this September, the Opry is bringing his music back to center stage. Darius Rucker, Pam Tillis, Neal McCoy, The War and Treaty, and Charley’s son Dion Pride are scheduled to honor him during **Opry 100 Honors: Charley Pride**. Fifty-nine years after that first Opry appearance, the songs are still there — and so is the legacy he left behind. Do you remember the first time you heard Charley Pride — and what it felt like?

No Comments

Charley Pride’s Songs Are Returning to the Opry Stage Charley Pride grew up in Sledge, Mississippi, listening to the Grand…

Uncategorized

CHARLEY PRIDE NEVER HAD TO FORCE A SONG TO SOUND TRUE. SOMETIMES ALL HE DID WAS SMILE — AND LET THE WORDS DO THE REST. Watch him sing “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” and you can see why people stayed with him for so many years. His voice was warm and steady. No reaching for a dramatic moment. No trying to prove how much the song meant. Even on November 11, 2020, when an 86-year-old Pride sang it with Jimmie Allen at the CMA Awards after receiving the Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award, that familiar ease was still there. It would become his final public performance. There was something about the way Pride delivered a love song that made a huge room feel smaller — almost as if he were singing to one person instead of thousands. Maybe that was his gift. He never made the emotion bigger than the song needed. And perhaps that is why those performances still feel so personal today. Not because Charley Pride tried to make them unforgettable. Because he never seemed to be trying at all.

No Comments

Charley Pride’s Quiet Magic Still Stays in the Room CHARLEY PRIDE never had to force a song to sound true.…

Uncategorized

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.

No Comments

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

Uncategorized

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…

No Comments

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

You Missed

Uncategorized

Glen Campbell was losing his memory when he recorded a song that began with something he could still remember clearly — the $5 guitar his grandfather gave him as a boy. Decades earlier, Glen had told his longtime friend and musician Carl Jackson about growing up in Arkansas. His grandfather taught him “In the Pines” on a $5 Sears & Roebuck guitar. Carl never forgot the story. Sometime in the 1970s, he wrote “Arkansas Farmboy,” a song about Glen’s journey from rural Arkansas to worldwide fame. Nearly 40 years later, the song came back to Glen. After his Alzheimer’s diagnosis and Goodbye Tour, Glen entered the studio for what would become his final album, Adiós. His ability to remember songs was already declining, but he recorded “Arkansas Farmboy” in the first person — singing words Carl had written about his life all those years before. Carl later said hearing Glen sing it gave him chills. The little boy who once learned a song on a $5 guitar had become one of the most famous voices in country music. And near the end, when so many memories were becoming harder to hold onto, Glen returned to the place where his story had begun.

Uncategorized

Connie Smith stepped away from the road when her career was still strong because five children needed her more than Nashville did. She had already become one of country music’s most recognizable voices, but the touring and recording meant leaving her family behind. Connie eventually made a choice that could easily have damaged her career: she stopped recording and pulled away from regular touring, keeping most of her performances to the Grand Ole Opry. She knew exactly what it might cost her. But years later, when her youngest of five children started kindergarten, Connie looked at the same children she had stayed home to raise and realized something else. They were growing up. They needed clothes. Food. Schooling. So Connie went back on the road. Not because she suddenly wanted fame again. Not because Nashville had called her back. She returned because being their mother now meant helping support them. Connie Smith had left the road for her children. Then, when the time came, she went back for the very same reason.

Uncategorized

Before Don Williams became the “Gentle Giant,” his successful group had broken up, he had taken jobs outside music, and he wasn’t even sure he was meant to be a solo star. The Pozo-Seco Singers had given Williams his first taste of success in the 1960s. But after the group fell apart, the future became uncertain. He tried several nonmusical jobs before heading to Nashville for another chance. That was where Cowboy Jack Clement entered the story. Clement signed Williams to his publishing company as a songwriter. Don began recording simple demos with Clement and producer Allen Reynolds, hoping other singers would cut his songs. But other artists weren’t interested enough. So Clement, Reynolds and Williams made a simple decision: if nobody else wanted to record the songs, Don would sing them himself. That decision changed everything. “The Shelter of Your Eyes” reached No. 14. “Come Early Morning” climbed to No. 12. Then “We Should Be Together” became his first Top Five country hit. In 1974, “I Wouldn’t Want to Live If You Didn’t Love Me” gave Williams his first No. 1. He would eventually collect 17 No. 1 country hits. But Don Williams’ solo career began almost by accident — because the songs he was trying to give away ended up sounding better in the quiet voice singing the demos.

Uncategorized

The morning Loretta Lynn died, the world didn’t know yet. For a little while, she wasn’t a country legend. She was simply “Momma,” and her children were rushing to her house. Loretta died peacefully in her sleep at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, on October 4, 2022. She was 90. A year later, her family described what those first hours had actually felt like. They called one another and hurried to the house. They knew the news would soon spread and the whirlwind would begin. But for the moment, no one knew. Just them. The world knew Loretta as the coal miner’s daughter who became a star, a songwriter, and one of the women who changed country music. Her family remembered something much simpler. “Yes, she was Loretta Lynn,” they wrote, “but to us she was momma.” Soon, everyone would have a Loretta Lynn story to tell. But that morning, the people inside the house weren’t thinking about country music history. They were trying to understand what home felt like without Momma there.