Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

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FOR FIVE DECADES WILLIE NELSON HAS OPENED HIS SHOWS WITH A SONG WRITTEN BY HIS OLD DRUMMER — A MAN NASHVILLE REFUSED TO RECORD. Johnny Bush kept time behind Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys and in Willie’s own band, the Record Men. Labels heard him sing and said he was too close to Ray Price to be worth a contract. Willie had heard a version of that verdict about himself, so in 1967 he paid for Bush’s first album on the small Stop label and gave him “You Ought to Hear Me Cry” to sing on it. That single scraped the chart at No. 69. Then “Undo the Right” reached No. 10 and “You Gave Me a Mountain” went to No. 7, and RCA signed Bush in 1972. His first single there was one he wrote himself: “Whiskey River.” Willie recorded it for Shotgun Willie the next year. Right then Bush’s voice began failing. It took years before anyone named it spasmodic dysphonia. RCA dropped him in 1974, and there were stretches when he could barely speak, much less sing. Willie kept opening every show with the song. Bush said the money it earned him “saved me through the spasmodic dysphonia years.”

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How Willie Nelson Turned Johnny Bush’s “Whiskey River” Into a Country Music Homecoming For decades, Willie Nelson has opened his…

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IN 1991, A NEWSPAPER CALLED THEM “THE SAINT AND THE SINNER.” THEY WERE ON THE SAME TOUR BUS. Conway Twitty was the saint. He never drank. Never touched drugs. Kept his private life so quiet that even people in Nashville didn’t know much about him. George Jones was the sinner, and everybody knew it. The drinking. The drugs. The nights he simply didn’t show up. They called him “No-Show Jones” and he wore it like an old coat. Two men who had almost nothing in common. And still, there they were — same stages, same road, each singing his own set. Someone asked Conway why he kept touring with him. He said the contrast was the whole point. People got both sides of country music in one night. Then he said something that wasn’t about music at all. “We’re not real close friends… But George has been as close a friend as I’ve had in the music business over the years.” Conway died two years later. He was 59. That same year, George walked into a studio and sang “Hello Darlin’.” Conway’s song.

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The Saint and the Sinner on the Same Bus In country music, some pairings make sense only after you have…

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HE TOOK $1,600 TO RECORD 16 SONGS — JUST ENOUGH MONEY TO LEAVE NASHVILLE FOREVER. By 1963, Roger Miller was done with Nashville. His RCA deal had run out. Nothing stuck. He’d been funny on the Tonight Show, people liked him, and he figured acting in Los Angeles was worth a shot. He just needed the money to get there. So he asked Smash Records for $1,600. They said yes — on one condition. Sixteen songs, $100 a side. January 10th and 11th, 1964. He walked into a Nashville studio with a dozen of his own songs and cut fifteen of them in two days. One ran 1 minute and 47 seconds. He’d written it in about ten minutes and didn’t think much of it. Neither did the label. The first single was supposed to be a completely different song. The only reason it wasn’t comes down to one man standing in that control room. “Dang Me” came out that May. By July it was No.1 country — six weeks at the top — and No.7 on pop, in the year The Beatles owned the radio. Miller took his $1,500 and moved to California anyway. He lived above Lee Hazlewood’s garage. At the 1965 Grammys he won five awards. Four were for that little song. He never did become an actor.

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Roger Miller’s $1,600 Gamble That Changed Everything By 1963, Roger Miller was ready to walk away from Nashville. His RCA…

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EIGHT WEEKS. THAT’S ALL THE TIME MARTY ROBBINS HAD LEFT AFTER THEY CALLED HIS NAME. On October 11, 1982, Marty Robbins nearly didn’t show up. His son Ronny said the CMA had never been warm to his father. Maybe one nomination in twelve or fifteen years. Marty had stopped expecting anything from that room a long time ago. Eddy Arnold is the only reason he walked in that night — and Arnold never told him why he was asking. Then Arnold stood up and said Marty’s name for the Country Music Hall of Fame. Marty looked stunned. He told the room he really felt there were other people who deserved it before he should get it. Then he added a line that got a laugh: “Possibly it might not happen again, so I’m gonna take it tonight.” They laughed because it sounded like a joke. He was 57 and having his best year in a decade. What almost nobody in that room knew was how much of it he was holding back. “Some Memories Just Won’t Die” had come out that April and climbed to No. 10 in August — his first Top 10 in over four years. Billboard gave him its Artist Resurgence Award the same month they gave him the Hall of Fame. Four weeks later, on November 7, he climbed into a Buick Regal at the Atlanta Journal 500 and finished 33rd. His last race. A month after that, his heart gave out. December 8, 1982. Fifty-eight days after he took the trophy he said might never come again.

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EIGHT WEEKS: THE NIGHT MARTY ROBBINS GOT HIS NAME CALLED On October 11, 1982, Marty Robbins almost did not show…

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THEY WAITED 20 YEARS TO SING TOGETHER AGAIN. THEY HAD 19 DAYS LEFT. The wind wouldn’t stop that night in Nashville. Naomi and Wynonna stood face to face outside the Country Music Hall of Fame, singing “Love Can Build a Bridge” — their first awards show performance together in more than 20 years. A gospel choir in white robes stood behind them. Halfway through, Wynonna looked at her mother and said it out loud: “This is really happening.” Earlier that day, a camera crew had asked Naomi one small question. Her answer only makes sense now. That same night they announced a 10-show farewell tour. And the building right behind them was about to induct them. Naomi never made it inside. She died on April 30 — nineteen days later. Her family said they lost her to mental illness. The ceremony went ahead the next day. Wynonna came with no speech written; she’d always figured her mom would do most of the talking. “Though my heart is broken, I will continue to sing,” she said. The question they’d asked Naomi was which one song she’d want to be remembered for. She said: “Love Can Build a Bridge.”

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They Waited 20 Years to Sing Together Again. They Had 19 Days Left. The wind was restless in Nashville that…

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40,000 EMPTY SEATS. ONE 86-YEAR-OLD MAN. AND A SONG NOBODY WAS THERE TO HEAR. July 24, 2020. The first game ever played at Globe Life Field in Arlington. Charley Pride walked out to the pitcher’s mound. He was 86 years old. The seats were empty. All 40,000 of them. Pandemic rules, no fans allowed. No cheering. Nothing. Back in the 1950s he pitched for the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro Leagues, a hundred dollars a month plus meal money. He kept trying to reach the majors. The door stayed shut. Even his first album in 1966 came out with his face left off the cover, so people would hear the voice before they saw the man. And how he got from those long bus rides to a seat in a Major League ownership group is a story most fans have never actually heard. In 2010 he bought a minority stake in the Texas Rangers. Ten years later he was standing on their mound as one of the owners. He closed his eyes and sang the anthem into the silence. Then he threw out the first pitch. Less than five months later, he was gone.

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40,000 Empty Seats. One 86-Year-Old Man. And a Song That Filled the Silence. On July 24, 2020, the first game…

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JOHN PRINE SAT IN HIS LIVING ROOM AND RECORDED ONE LAST SONG ABOUT REMEMBERING EVERYTHING. THE WORLD DID NOT HEAR IT UNTIL AFTER HE WAS GONE. In 2019, Prine gathered with producer Dave Cobb and engineer Gena Johnson inside his Nashville home. There was no large studio and no audience. Just John, his guitar and a song he had written with his longtime friend Pat McLaughlin. It was called “I Remember Everything.” Prine sang about the towns, hotel rooms and imperfect guitars that had filled his long life on the road. No one in the room knew it would be his final recording. John died on April 7, 2020, from complications of COVID-19. He was 73. Two months later, his family released the song. It became the highest-charting single of his career as a performer and later won two Grammy Awards: Best American Roots Performance and Best American Roots Song. John Prine spent nearly 50 years writing about ordinary people and the memories they carried. In the final song he left behind, he did not sing about forgetting. He told the world he remembered everything.

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John Prine’s Final Song and the Memory He Left Behind In 2019, John Prine sat in the comfort of his…

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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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SHE GAVE UP HER OWN SINGING CAREER AND TAUGHT FOUR CHILDREN TO HARMONIZE IN A CAR WITH NO RADIO. AT NINETY, REBA McENTIRE’S MOTHER FINALLY GOT HER NAME ON A RECORD. Jacqueline Smith wanted to be a country singer. People in Oklahoma said she could have been as big as Patsy Cline. She was teaching school by sixteen. She married Clark McEntire, a three-time world champion steer roper, and raised four children on a ranch in Chockie, Oklahoma. The family car had no radio. So on the long drives to her husband’s rodeos, Jacqueline taught the children to sing harmony in the backseat. One of them was Reba. Reba went on to sell tens of millions of records. Her mother stayed a teacher, a librarian, a school secretary. Then, more than fifty years after those car rides, Reba made a gospel album. She refused to record “I’ll Fly Away” until her mother and her sisters could get to Nashville. When they arrived, all three sang harmony behind her — exactly the way Jacqueline had taught them. On another track, her mother suggested a change to the words. Reba put her name on it as a co-writer. “Sing It Now: Songs of Faith & Hope” came out in February 2017. Jacqueline McEntire was ninety years old. She died three years later, at ninety-three.

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THE BUCKLE RONNIE DUNN WORE TO ACCEPT HIS 18TH ACM AWARD ISN’T AN AWARD AT ALL. Every artist who performs at Cheyenne Frontier Days walks away with one, and Brooks & Dunn have played the Daddy of ’em All several times over the years. You don’t beat anybody for it. You show up, you play the rodeo grounds in Wyoming, and the silver is yours. That is what sat on his belt on May 17 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, when Brooks & Dunn won Duo of the Year at the 61st ACM Awards. Second year running, and the eighteenth time in that category. No duo has ever won it more. “I don’t know why y’all aren’t getting sick of us,” Kix Brooks said at the podium. It was the second time in seven months the buckle made national television, because Dunn had it on in November too, when they took Vocal Duo of the Year at the CMAs in Nashville. So a man with closets full of trophies keeps reaching past all of them for the one piece of silver he didn’t have to win. On August 19 the ACM hands Cheyenne Frontier Days a trophy of its own, Fair/Rodeo of the Year, at the Honors ceremony in Nashville. Ronnie Dunn was wearing that place on his belt long before anyone thought to give it an award.

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On November 19, 2007, Charlie Daniels was at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium for his annual Christmas For Kids benefit concert, an event created to help children in need enjoy a better Christmas. During the show, Martina McBride walked onto the stage carrying a small gift box. Inside was a card with news Charlie had waited decades to hear. He was being invited to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Charlie stepped back, clearly overwhelmed as the audience rose to its feet. For a man who had come to Nashville years earlier with his wife and young son, it was one of the highest honors country music could give him. “This is very emotional for me,” he told the crowd. The moment was especially fitting because Charlie had spent that evening trying to give something to other people. He came to the Ryman to help children at Christmas. Before the night was over, country music had given Charlie Daniels a gift of its own.

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HE SPENT HIS CHILDHOOD WATCHING HIS MOTHER CUT HAIR TO KEEP FOOD ON THE TABLE. DECADES LATER, JIMMY DEAN FINALLY FOUND A WAY TO REPAY HER — WITH A SONG. Jimmy Dean grew up poor in the Texas Panhandle. His mother, Ruth, raised the family through hard years, cutting hair in their home to earn money. When Jimmy was ten, she taught him to play piano. He later taught himself guitar, harmonica, and accordion. That small beginning eventually carried him far beyond Texas. “Big Bad John” made him a star. Television made him a household name. But by the mid-1970s, his biggest recording years seemed to be behind him. Then, in 1976, Jimmy recorded “I.O.U.” It wasn’t a love song or another story about a larger-than-life character. It was a spoken tribute to mothers — remembering all the jobs a mother performs without ever sending her children a bill. The record became Jimmy’s first Top 10 country hit in a decade. For Ruth Dean’s son, the meaning went deeper than a chart position. The woman who had worked inside their home to support him had also placed his fingers on a piano when he was ten. Nearly forty years later, he was still using what she gave him to say thank you.