Country Music

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RILEY GREEN WROTE A SONG WHERE THE MAN HAS ALREADY RUN OUT OF PRIDE. “Imagine That” arrived Friday, July 31, as track five on That’s Just Me, the 19-song album he releases September 18. He wrote it with Jonathan Singleton and Ray Fulcher, and it’s stripped back to acoustic guitar and steel, the traditional sound he built his name on. The man in it calls an old love late at night. He doesn’t argue his case and doesn’t relitigate anything. He just describes the night the way it could still go: a truck ready to leave, a long drive, no reason to be anywhere by morning. Imagine that, he keeps asking her. Then he stops asking her to picture it. He tells her he’s standing right outside her door. That’s why the song lands. Every imagine in it came from a man who was already there.

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Riley Green’s “Imagine That” Finds Its Power in What Was Already There Riley Green has built a career on songs…

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ELEVEN YEARS AFTER CONWAY TWITTY DIED, ANITA COCHRAN RELEASED A DUET WITH HIM. HE HAD NEVER HEARD THE SONG — OR SUNG ITS LYRICS. Anita wrote “(I Wanna Hear) A Cheatin’ Song” and imagined Conway’s deep voice answering hers. But Conway had died in 1993, long before the song existed. With permission from his family, Anita and her producers searched through dozens of Conway’s recordings from the 1980s. They isolated words, syllables and small pieces of his voice, then carefully joined them together to create entirely new lines. Some words were already complete. Others had to be built from several different recordings. Near the end, Anita asks, “Can you help me, Conway?” His familiar voice answers, “Yeah.” The duet was released in 2004 and reached No. 57 on Billboard’s country chart. It became Conway’s first appearance there in more than a decade. To listeners, it sounded as though Conway had returned to the studio for one last song. But he never knew the song existed. His voice had been carried across 11 years of silence to sing words he had never spoken together.

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When Anita Cochran Reached Across Time for Conway Twitty In country music, some songs feel like a conversation waiting to…

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ROY CLARK HAD ALREADY PLAYED FOR PRESIDENTS, PACKED THEATERS AND MILLIONS OF TELEVISION VIEWERS. BUT AT 76, HE STILL FELT HUMBLED JUST TO SEE HIS NAME BESIDE HIS HEROES. On May 17, 2009, Roy Clark entered the Country Music Hall of Fame. By then, he had spent four decades bringing country music into American homes through Hee Haw. He had performed in Las Vegas, guest-hosted The Tonight Show and carried country music into the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He could make an audience laugh, then silence the same room with a guitar or banjo. Yet when the Hall of Fame finally placed his name among the legends who had inspired him, Roy did not speak like a man reviewing his achievements. He spoke like the teenage boy who had once played beside his father for two dollars. Roy said the moving part was knowing that his name would now be spoken “right along with all the list.” After more than half a century of music, Roy Clark’s greatest honor was not standing above his heroes. It was finally standing beside them.

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Roy Clark and the Quiet Weight of a Great Honor On May 17, 2009, Roy Clark entered the Country Music…

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MILLIONS KNEW ROY CLARK’S SMILE. BUT THE WOMAN WHO KNEW THE MAN BEHIND IT HAD BEEN BESIDE HIM FOR 61 YEARS. Roy married Barbara Joyce Rupard on August 31, 1957. They built a family with five children and stayed together through decades of touring, television and fame. Their marriage began twelve years before “Hee Haw” made Roy’s face familiar in millions of American homes. Barbara knew him before the awards, before the packed theaters and before “Yesterday, When I Was Young” became the song most closely tied to his name. On November 15, 2018, Roy died from complications of pneumonia at his home in Tulsa. He was 85. Barbara was still his wife—the same woman he had married more than six decades earlier. Country music lost a gifted entertainer that day. Barbara lost the man with whom she had shared nearly her entire adult life.

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Roy Clark’s Smile Was Famous. Barbara Joyce Rupard Knew the Man Behind It. Millions of American viewers came to recognize…

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MERLE HAGGARD DROVE ALL NIGHT TO RECORD WITH THE MAN WHO HAD TAUGHT HIM EVERYTHING. BY THE TIME HE ARRIVED, BOB WILLS HAD SUFFERED A MASSIVE STROKE — AND WOULD NEVER WAKE UP AGAIN. As a boy in Bakersfield, Merle rode his bicycle to Beardsley’s Ballroom and listened to Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys through an open window. Years later, he said of Wills, “You know what I learned from Bob Wills? Everything.” In December 1973, Wills gathered his former Texas Playboys in a Dallas studio for one final album. He was already partly paralyzed and arrived in a wheelchair, but he still called for solos and added his familiar “Ah-ha!” as the band played around him. That night, Bob suffered another massive stroke. Merle had just finished a show in Chicago. His bus drove through the night because he had begged for the chance to play with his hero. When he reached the studio the next day, Bob was gone and the room had fallen quiet. Merle stayed. He played fiddle and sang three songs with the Texas Playboys. Bob Wills never regained consciousness. The album was released under a title no one could have made more fitting: “For the Last Time.”

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Merle Haggard, Bob Wills, and One Final Night of Western Swing Some stories in country music feel less like industry…

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FOUR COUNTRY OUTLAWS SANG ABOUT A BOY WATCHING HIS CHILDHOOD HERO GROW OLD. BUT “DESPERADOS WAITING FOR A TRAIN” WAS NOT FICTION. IT WAS GUY CLARK’S GOODBYE TO THE MAN WHO HAD BEEN LIKE A GRANDFATHER TO HIM. Jack Prigg was an oil driller who lived in the Texas hotel owned by Guy’s grandmother. While Guy’s father was serving overseas during World War II, Jack became the steady male figure in the boy’s life. He took Guy with him, taught him to drive and filled his childhood with stories. But years later, Guy watched the strong man he admired become old and weak. Guy visited Jack shortly before he died. There was little left to say. In the song, they simply close their eyes, return to an old kitchen in their memories and sing together one more time. In 1985, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson recorded it as The Highwaymen. Four famous outlaws. One quiet truth. Even the strongest childhood heroes eventually grow old.

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Four Country Outlaws Sang About a Boy Watching His Childhood Hero Grow Old In 1985, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon…

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ONE COUNTRY SINGER TOOK THIS SONG TO #53. A YEAR LATER, CONWAY TWITTY TOOK THE SAME SONG TO #1. In 1981, “Slow Hand” was a Pointer Sisters record. Pure pop. It sat at #2 for three weeks, stuck behind “Endless Love.” Country radio gave it a try. Del Reeves cut his own version that same year. It stopped at #53 and vanished. Then Conway Twitty picked it up. He had just left MCA. The label had turned its attention to younger acts. So he signed with Elektra and started over. He didn’t dress the song up as country. He changed a few words so a man could sing them — and that small switch changed who the song was speaking to. Once you hear it, you can’t hear it the old way again. The writers never had him in mind. John Bettis admitted the Pointer Sisters weren’t in their heads either. Released April 24, 1982. Two weeks at #1 that June. It was his last multi-week #1. And the last gold record with his name on it.

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How One Song Moved from Pop to Country and Found Its Second Life with Conway Twitty In 1981, “Slow Hand”…

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IN 2019 THIS SONG NEVER WENT TO RADIO. FOUR YEARS LATER IT WENT TO NO. 1. “Different ‘Round Here” was the title track of Riley Green’s 2019 debut album and nothing more than that — no single release, no radio push. It just sat there while people found it on their own. By 2023 it had gone Gold with close to half a billion streams, and Green said it had become one of those songs proud hometown fans sing along to the loudest, night after night. So he cut it a second time with Luke Combs while he was opening Combs’ world tour, and in February 2024 that version reached No. 1 at country radio. The place in that song is not a metaphor. Green is from Jacksonville, Alabama, and he told Fox News earlier this year that moving to Nashville has never once crossed his mind. He told Theo Von he now owns 1,780 acres back home, all of it connected, bought in small pieces over years of calling neighbors to ask if anyone was ready to sell. He clears the fields himself. The first 141 acres belonged to his great-uncle Bill, his granddaddy Buford’s brother. It was the ground Riley ran around on as a boy. He bought that piece first, and every acre since has grown outward from it.

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When a Song Waited Years to Be Heard In 2019, Riley Green released his debut album, Different ‘Round Here, and…

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WHEN MINNIE AALDERS MARRIED HANK SNOW IN 1935, HE WAS A STRUGGLING RADIO SINGER WITHOUT A RECORD CONTRACT. SIXTY-FOUR YEARS LATER, SHE WAS STILL HIS WIFE WHEN COUNTRY MUSIC LOST HIM. Minnie worked at a chocolate factory in Halifax while Hank tried to build a life with his guitar and small radio appearances. They married on September 2, 1935. Their only son arrived the following year and was named Jimmie Rodgers Snow, after Hank’s musical hero. Success did not come quickly. Hank faced years of traveling, rejection and failed attempts to break into the United States. Minnie stayed through all of it. She was there before RCA signed him. Before the Grand Ole Opry. Before “I’m Movin’ On” made him a star. Hank died at their Rainbow Ranch on December 20, 1999, at 85. The man famous for singing about leaving and moving on spent 64 years married to the same woman.

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Before Hank Snow Was Famous, Minnie Aalders Was Already There Long before Hank Snow became a country music legend, before…

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HE WROTE A SONG ABOUT REFUSING TO LET AGE DEFEAT HIM. FIVE YEARS LATER, TOBY KEITH SANG IT WHILE CANCER WAS TRYING TO TAKE HIS STRENGTH AWAY. In 2018, Toby Keith played golf with Clint Eastwood shortly before the actor’s 88th birthday. Eastwood was preparing to direct and star in another movie, so Toby asked how he kept going. Eastwood answered, “I don’t let the old man in.” Toby went home and wrote “Don’t Let the Old Man In.” Eastwood later used it in the closing scene of The Mule. Five years later, the song belonged to Toby in a way he could never have imagined. In September 2023, after stepping away for 18 months to battle stomach cancer, Toby returned to television at the People’s Choice Country Awards. Wearing his white cowboy hat and holding an acoustic guitar, he sang the song slowly before a silent room. The words had not changed. Toby had. He had originally written about an old man refusing to surrender to age. Now, at 62, he was singing while fighting to remain on the stage himself. The performance sent the song to No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. Toby died four months later, on February 5, 2024. “Don’t Let the Old Man In” began as advice from Clint Eastwood. In Toby Keith’s final televised performance, it became something deeper: one last declaration that illness could weaken his body, but it would not decide how he faced the end.

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Toby Keith, “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” and the Performance That Changed Its Meaning Sometimes a song begins as…

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RILEY GREEN WROTE A SONG WHERE THE MAN HAS ALREADY RUN OUT OF PRIDE. “Imagine That” arrived Friday, July 31, as track five on That’s Just Me, the 19-song album he releases September 18. He wrote it with Jonathan Singleton and Ray Fulcher, and it’s stripped back to acoustic guitar and steel, the traditional sound he built his name on. The man in it calls an old love late at night. He doesn’t argue his case and doesn’t relitigate anything. He just describes the night the way it could still go: a truck ready to leave, a long drive, no reason to be anywhere by morning. Imagine that, he keeps asking her. Then he stops asking her to picture it. He tells her he’s standing right outside her door. That’s why the song lands. Every imagine in it came from a man who was already there.

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ELEVEN YEARS AFTER CONWAY TWITTY DIED, ANITA COCHRAN RELEASED A DUET WITH HIM. HE HAD NEVER HEARD THE SONG — OR SUNG ITS LYRICS. Anita wrote “(I Wanna Hear) A Cheatin’ Song” and imagined Conway’s deep voice answering hers. But Conway had died in 1993, long before the song existed. With permission from his family, Anita and her producers searched through dozens of Conway’s recordings from the 1980s. They isolated words, syllables and small pieces of his voice, then carefully joined them together to create entirely new lines. Some words were already complete. Others had to be built from several different recordings. Near the end, Anita asks, “Can you help me, Conway?” His familiar voice answers, “Yeah.” The duet was released in 2004 and reached No. 57 on Billboard’s country chart. It became Conway’s first appearance there in more than a decade. To listeners, it sounded as though Conway had returned to the studio for one last song. But he never knew the song existed. His voice had been carried across 11 years of silence to sing words he had never spoken together.

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ROY CLARK HAD ALREADY PLAYED FOR PRESIDENTS, PACKED THEATERS AND MILLIONS OF TELEVISION VIEWERS. BUT AT 76, HE STILL FELT HUMBLED JUST TO SEE HIS NAME BESIDE HIS HEROES. On May 17, 2009, Roy Clark entered the Country Music Hall of Fame. By then, he had spent four decades bringing country music into American homes through Hee Haw. He had performed in Las Vegas, guest-hosted The Tonight Show and carried country music into the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He could make an audience laugh, then silence the same room with a guitar or banjo. Yet when the Hall of Fame finally placed his name among the legends who had inspired him, Roy did not speak like a man reviewing his achievements. He spoke like the teenage boy who had once played beside his father for two dollars. Roy said the moving part was knowing that his name would now be spoken “right along with all the list.” After more than half a century of music, Roy Clark’s greatest honor was not standing above his heroes. It was finally standing beside them.

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MILLIONS KNEW ROY CLARK’S SMILE. BUT THE WOMAN WHO KNEW THE MAN BEHIND IT HAD BEEN BESIDE HIM FOR 61 YEARS. Roy married Barbara Joyce Rupard on August 31, 1957. They built a family with five children and stayed together through decades of touring, television and fame. Their marriage began twelve years before “Hee Haw” made Roy’s face familiar in millions of American homes. Barbara knew him before the awards, before the packed theaters and before “Yesterday, When I Was Young” became the song most closely tied to his name. On November 15, 2018, Roy died from complications of pneumonia at his home in Tulsa. He was 85. Barbara was still his wife—the same woman he had married more than six decades earlier. Country music lost a gifted entertainer that day. Barbara lost the man with whom she had shared nearly her entire adult life.