Country Music

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Charley Pride left Dion more than a famous last name — he gave his son years beside him onstage before Dion ever had to carry the music alone. Dion began performing young, but some of his most important lessons came while working with his father. He played lead guitar and keyboards in Charley’s shows and spent years opening concerts for him, learning how Charley handled a song, a band, and an audience from only a few feet away. Charley later recorded one of Dion’s own compositions, “I Miss My Home,” for his 2011 album Choices. Then Charley died on December 12, 2020, at 86. He left behind a Country Music Hall of Fame career, dozens of No. 1 country hits, and a place in history that few artists could ever match. Dion was left with something more personal: the songs he had spent years playing beside his father. After Charley was gone, Dion kept performing them. One of the songs he has continued to carry is “Mountain of Love,” a song that became especially meaningful during the years they toured together. For a long time, Dion stood a few feet behind his father with a guitar in his hands. Now he stands there without him, keeping the same music moving forward.

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Charley Pride and Dion: The Music That Never Really Left the Stage For Dion, growing up as Charley Pride’s son…

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TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER CHRIS LEDOUX DIED, HIS GREATEST INHERITANCE WASN’T THE 36 ALBUMS OR THE 6 MILLION RECORDS — IT WAS A STACK OF HANDWRITTEN PAPERS WITH LINES CROSSED OUT. March 9, 2005. Bile duct cancer, diagnosed four months earlier. He died in a Casper, Wyoming hospital with his family in the room. Chris LeDoux was 56. He left behind 36 albums. Six million records sold. A world bareback championship from 1976. But none of that is what his son Ned inherited. For years Ned sat behind him — the drummer in his father’s band, out of the light. When Chris died, Ned put down the sticks and picked up a guitar. Then his mother found papers around the house. Handwritten. Song ideas two or three lines long, some lines crossed out. They made their way to Ned. In 2016, he and Mac McAnally filled in the blanks on one and called it “We Ain’t Got It All.” Eight years later, a songwriter friend told him something else still existed: a vocal Chris recorded in 2003 that never came out. The last song his father ever sang in a studio. It had sat on a shelf for twenty-one years. Ned was out on tour when they dropped that vocal in. The first time he heard it, he and his father were already singing together. Some fathers leave fortunes. Chris left crossed-out lines, and the one son who could finish them.

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Chris LeDoux’s Quiet Legacy: The Handwritten Lines He Left Behind Twenty-one years after Chris LeDoux died, the biggest part of…

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Brad Paisley became one of country music’s biggest stars, but he never stopped looking up to Little Jimmy Dickens. The two were separated by more than four decades in age, yet their friendship grew far beyond the Grand Ole Opry stage. Brad often described Jimmy as both a mentor and a dear friend. One of their most meaningful moments came after the devastating Nashville flood of 2010. The famous wooden circle from the Opry stage had been rescued from four feet of floodwater and restored. When it was finally returned, Brad stood beside Jimmy as they rededicated it by singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Their friendship even followed Brad home. He later bought Jimmy’s old Chevrolet S-10 pickup, still carrying the personalized plate “IBTATER.” For Brad, Jimmy wasn’t simply an older country legend. He was a friend who helped connect him to the traditions he was now carrying forward.

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Brad Paisley and Little Jimmy Dickens: A Friendship That Kept Country Tradition Alive Brad Paisley became one of country music’s…

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16 NUMBER-ONE SONGS IN A ROW — AND HE NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE NIGHTCLUB TO GET THERE. Sonny James grew up on a 300-acre farm outside Hackleburg, Alabama. Early in his career he spent two months fronting Slim Whitman’s touring band. When Whitman began taking club dates to pay his musicians, Sonny finished the shows he had promised and left. For the next thirty years he never played a club again. In early 1957, “Young Love” hit number one on both the country and the pop charts and sold over a million copies. He was 28 years old. He then wrote a clause into his contracts: no venues with drinking or gambling. He turned down Las Vegas money so teenagers could still get through the door. That July he married Doris Shrode in Dallas. She gave no interviews and never stood on a stage. Then came the run — 16 straight number ones, from “Need You” in 1967 to “Here Comes Honey Again” in 1971. Nobody matched it until 1985. In the spring of 1984, he and Doris quietly went home to Nashville. He did not appear on television again for nearly 20 years. He died on February 22, 2016, at 87. Doris followed 19 months later. They were married 58 years, and they are buried in the same small Alabama town he came from.

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Sonny James and the Quiet Road to 16 Number One Songs Sonny James did not build his career like most…

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35 NUMBER-ONE COUNTRY HITS BETWEEN 1973 AND 1992 — AND HE NEVER SAW A SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Ronnie Milsap was born blind, in a small cabin in Robbinsville, North Carolina. The woman who put him on those charts never sang a note and never took a bow. He met Joyce Reeves in 1964, at a dinner given by her cousin. She dared him to a foot race. He accepted, ran straight into an open car door, and fell. She circled back laughing. They married on October 30, 1965. That same year he turned down a law school scholarship to play nightclubs instead. For years she hauled his keyboard to those gigs in a Volkswagen. Then came October 16, 1972. They were sitting at home in Memphis with the CMA Awards on television. Charley Pride won Male Vocalist of the Year. Joyce watched it and told Ronnie they were moving to Nashville. He said he had no job there. They went anyway, the week after Christmas. He signed with a manager on January 3, 1973 — one week in town. By January 1974 he was on stage beside Charley Pride. Joyce died on September 6, 2021. They had been married almost 56 years.

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Ronnie Milsap, Joyce Reeves, and the Quiet Force Behind 35 Country No. 1 Hits Ronnie Milsap’s story has always sounded…

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LORETTA LYNN GREW UP LISTENING TO ERNEST TUBB ON THE RADIO. IN 1964, HE CHOSE HER TO SING BESIDE HIM. Long before Loretta Lynn became one of country music’s biggest stars, Ernest Tubb was already one of the voices she listened to back home. So when Tubb chose her as a duet partner, it meant more than another recording session. He praised Loretta as an honest country performer who sang with “heart and soul.” On March 10, 1964, they recorded “Mr. and Mrs. Used to Be” in Nashville. The song told a simple, painful story: two people who had once been husband and wife looking back at a love that was gone. The single reached No. 11 on Billboard’s country chart, becoming their biggest hit together. Their first full duet album followed in 1965. For Loretta, there was something especially meaningful about it: the man she once heard through a radio was now standing beside her at the microphone.

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Loretta Lynn and Ernest Tubb: When a Radio Dream Became a Duet Before Loretta Lynn was a household name in…

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TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER DON RICH DIED, BUCK OWENS WAS STILL THINKING ABOUT HAVING HIM BESIDE HIM IN DEATH. Don Rich died in a motorcycle crash in 1974, at only 32 years old. For Buck Owens, the loss never became just another sad chapter from the past. In a 1995 interview, Buck talked about preparing a family burial place for the future. Then he mentioned Don. Buck said he wanted Don Rich moved there too, because he believed Don would want to be with him. That one detail said more than any long tribute could. Don had been Buck’s guitarist, harmony singer, bandleader and musical partner during the years that made the Buckaroos famous. But to Buck, he had become something closer to family. More than two decades after the accident, Buck was still imagining a final resting place with Don nearby. Some partnerships end when the music stops. Buck never seemed to believe theirs did.

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Twenty-One Years After Don Rich Died, Buck Owens Was Still Thinking About Having Him Beside Him in Death In country…

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BUCK OWENS SANG THE HITS. BUT TWO OF HIS NO. 1 SONGS CARRIED DON RICH’S NAME AS A SONGWRITER. Most fans remember Don Rich standing beside Buck Owens with a Telecaster, adding the bright guitar and high harmony that helped define the Buckaroos. But Don was doing more than backing Buck. He helped write “Before You Go,” which became a No. 1 country hit for Buck in 1965. Then Don and Estella Olson wrote “Think of Me,” another Buck Owens recording that reached No. 1 in 1966. By then, Don was Buck’s bandleader, guitarist, fiddler, harmony singer — and an important part of the Bakersfield sound. The name on the front of the record was Buck Owens. But listen closely to those great years, and Don Rich is everywhere.

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Buck Owens Sang the Hits. Don Rich Helped Write Two of the Biggest. When people talk about Buck Owens and…

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DWIGHT YOAKAM HAD HEARD PLENTY OF MERLE HAGGARD SONGS. ONE OF THEM HIT HIM HARDER THAN ALL THE REST. It was “Holding Things Together.” Merle wrote it about a father trying to raise his children after their mother walked away. There is no big twist in the song. Just a man doing the work of two parents and trying to keep a broken family from falling apart. That simplicity stayed with Dwight. He later called it his favorite Merle Haggard song, drawn to the way Merle could take ordinary words and make them carry enormous pain. In 1994, Dwight finally recorded “Holding Things Together” himself for the tribute album Tulare Dust: A Songwriter’s Tribute to Merle Haggard. He did not choose one of Merle’s biggest anthems. He chose the quiet song about a man struggling to hold his family together — because that was the Merle Haggard songwriting that had stayed with him.

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Dwight Yoakam and the Merle Haggard Song That Stayed with Him Dwight Yoakam had heard plenty of Merle Haggard songs…

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RANDY OWEN BECAME THE VOICE OF ALABAMA. KELLY HELPED BUILD THE LIFE HE KEPT COMING HOME TO. Randy Owen married Kelly on February 11, 1975, years before ALABAMA became one of country music’s biggest acts. While Randy spent decades singing to packed arenas, their life together stayed rooted near Fort Payne, Alabama. They raised three children, but music was never the only thing holding the family together. Randy had grown up farming and working with livestock, and in 1980, he and Kelly bought their first registered Hereford cattle. Together they built Tennessee River Music, their cattle operation on Lookout Mountain near the land where Randy grew up. In 2025, Randy and Kelly celebrated 50 years of marriage. That same year, both were honored by the American Hereford Association for their decades in the cattle industry. Millions knew Randy as the man behind “Mountain Music.” Kelly knew the man who came home to the farm.

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Randy Owen Became the Voice of Alabama. Kelly Built the Life He Kept Coming Home To. Long before Randy Owen…

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Charley Pride left Dion more than a famous last name — he gave his son years beside him onstage before Dion ever had to carry the music alone. Dion began performing young, but some of his most important lessons came while working with his father. He played lead guitar and keyboards in Charley’s shows and spent years opening concerts for him, learning how Charley handled a song, a band, and an audience from only a few feet away. Charley later recorded one of Dion’s own compositions, “I Miss My Home,” for his 2011 album Choices. Then Charley died on December 12, 2020, at 86. He left behind a Country Music Hall of Fame career, dozens of No. 1 country hits, and a place in history that few artists could ever match. Dion was left with something more personal: the songs he had spent years playing beside his father. After Charley was gone, Dion kept performing them. One of the songs he has continued to carry is “Mountain of Love,” a song that became especially meaningful during the years they toured together. For a long time, Dion stood a few feet behind his father with a guitar in his hands. Now he stands there without him, keeping the same music moving forward.

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TWENTY-ONE YEARS AFTER CHRIS LEDOUX DIED, HIS GREATEST INHERITANCE WASN’T THE 36 ALBUMS OR THE 6 MILLION RECORDS — IT WAS A STACK OF HANDWRITTEN PAPERS WITH LINES CROSSED OUT. March 9, 2005. Bile duct cancer, diagnosed four months earlier. He died in a Casper, Wyoming hospital with his family in the room. Chris LeDoux was 56. He left behind 36 albums. Six million records sold. A world bareback championship from 1976. But none of that is what his son Ned inherited. For years Ned sat behind him — the drummer in his father’s band, out of the light. When Chris died, Ned put down the sticks and picked up a guitar. Then his mother found papers around the house. Handwritten. Song ideas two or three lines long, some lines crossed out. They made their way to Ned. In 2016, he and Mac McAnally filled in the blanks on one and called it “We Ain’t Got It All.” Eight years later, a songwriter friend told him something else still existed: a vocal Chris recorded in 2003 that never came out. The last song his father ever sang in a studio. It had sat on a shelf for twenty-one years. Ned was out on tour when they dropped that vocal in. The first time he heard it, he and his father were already singing together. Some fathers leave fortunes. Chris left crossed-out lines, and the one son who could finish them.

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Brad Paisley became one of country music’s biggest stars, but he never stopped looking up to Little Jimmy Dickens. The two were separated by more than four decades in age, yet their friendship grew far beyond the Grand Ole Opry stage. Brad often described Jimmy as both a mentor and a dear friend. One of their most meaningful moments came after the devastating Nashville flood of 2010. The famous wooden circle from the Opry stage had been rescued from four feet of floodwater and restored. When it was finally returned, Brad stood beside Jimmy as they rededicated it by singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Their friendship even followed Brad home. He later bought Jimmy’s old Chevrolet S-10 pickup, still carrying the personalized plate “IBTATER.” For Brad, Jimmy wasn’t simply an older country legend. He was a friend who helped connect him to the traditions he was now carrying forward.

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16 NUMBER-ONE SONGS IN A ROW — AND HE NEVER PLAYED A SINGLE NIGHTCLUB TO GET THERE. Sonny James grew up on a 300-acre farm outside Hackleburg, Alabama. Early in his career he spent two months fronting Slim Whitman’s touring band. When Whitman began taking club dates to pay his musicians, Sonny finished the shows he had promised and left. For the next thirty years he never played a club again. In early 1957, “Young Love” hit number one on both the country and the pop charts and sold over a million copies. He was 28 years old. He then wrote a clause into his contracts: no venues with drinking or gambling. He turned down Las Vegas money so teenagers could still get through the door. That July he married Doris Shrode in Dallas. She gave no interviews and never stood on a stage. Then came the run — 16 straight number ones, from “Need You” in 1967 to “Here Comes Honey Again” in 1971. Nobody matched it until 1985. In the spring of 1984, he and Doris quietly went home to Nashville. He did not appear on television again for nearly 20 years. He died on February 22, 2016, at 87. Doris followed 19 months later. They were married 58 years, and they are buried in the same small Alabama town he came from.