Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

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MERLE HAGGARD HAD 38 NUMBER-ONE HITS. THE SONG THAT DEFINED HIM WASN’T ONE OF THEM. IT NEVER CHARTED AT ALL. Everyone knows “Okie from Muskogee.” Many know “Mama Tried.” But the song other artists have recorded more than anything else Haggard ever wrote was buried on the back of a 45 nobody was supposed to flip over. In 1967, Haggard was falling out of love with his wife, Bonnie Owens, and planning to leave her. She knew. They were walking through an airport when he looked over at her and said he thought he’d started loving her again today. She told him to turn the line around. He wrote the rest a few days later, alone in a motel room in Dallas. On February 1, 1968 — the day after cutting his next No. 1 — he recorded it in a single session and stuck it on the B-side. It wasn’t a love song. It was a man telling his wife to her face that he’d been packed and ready to go, and had changed his mind. Some songs are pushed to No. 1. This one never charted — and outlived every song that did. Have you heard Merle’s own version — or only somebody else’s?

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Merle Haggard’s Song That Never Needed a Hit Parade Merle Haggard had plenty of songs that filled jukeboxes, radio playlists,…

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HE DIDN’T RECORD A COVER. HE RECORDED HIS OWN EULOGY — AND EVERYONE INVOLVED KNEW IT. “Hurt” isn’t a song about addiction. It’s a man reading his own ledger out loud. Trent Reznor wrote it in his twenties, from inside the wreck. Cash sang it at seventy, from the far side of it — the same words, but one man was predicting and the other was confirming. Watch the video again. The House of Cash museum, shuttered. The dust. A banquet table set with more food than anyone could eat, and nobody sitting at it. His hands, too unsteady now to be certain of the strings. And June, on the staircase, watching him. This is for anyone who has ever looked at everything they built and seen the invoice instead of the achievement. That’s the part that breaks you. Not that he was dying. That she was standing right there — and she would go first. Four months later, she did. He followed in four more. Sometimes a man doesn’t get to apologize. He only gets to be heard. When was the last time you sat all the way through it — and what were you going through when you did?

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Hurt Was Never Just a Cover Johnny Cash did not walk into the recording of “Hurt” as if he were…

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TO A STADIUM FULL OF FANS, HE WAS ALAN JACKSON. TO THREE WOMEN IN THE CROWD, HE WAS STILL DADO. At Alan Jackson’s final concert in Nashville, the world came to say goodbye to a country music icon. But in one family box sat the people who had known him before the white hat became history. His wife, Denise. His daughters, Mattie, Ali, and Dani. The family that watched the road take him away night after night — and watched the songs bring him home again. After the show, Mattie Jackson Smith called the night “surreal,” “humbling,” and unforgettable. She wrote that his music had crossed generations because he always sang the truth. That is the part fans felt too. For more than three decades, Alan Jackson gave strangers songs for weddings, funerals, backroads, heartbreaks, and Sunday memories. But before he belonged to country music, he belonged to them. And maybe that is what made the final bow so powerful. The icon stood in front of the world. The father stood in front of his girls.

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Alan Jackson’s Final Night in Nashville Felt Like a Family Goodbye To a stadium full of fans, he was Alan…

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HE WROTE “ME AND BOBBY McGEE,” “HELP ME MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT,” AND “SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN.” THEN A RECORD LABEL ASKED KRIS KRISTOFFERSON TO SING HIS OWN SONGS — AND HE TOLD THEM, “I CAN’T SING. I SOUND LIKE A FROG!” Before Nashville, Kris Kristofferson had already been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves boxer, an Army Ranger and a helicopter pilot. The Army planned to send him to West Point to teach English, but in 1965 he left the service and chose songwriting instead. In Nashville, he worked as a janitor at Columbia’s studio while artists including Bob Dylan recorded there. He tried getting songs to Johnny Cash through June Carter, but the tapes disappeared into the mountain of material Cash received. Then came the story Nashville never forgot. Kris really did land a helicopter on Cash’s property — but Cash wasn’t home. Kristofferson later laughed at the embellished version involving a beer and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” Cash eventually became one of his greatest champions. And when Fred Foster signed Kris to Monument as a recording artist, Kristofferson could hardly believe it. “I can’t sing,” he told him. “I sound like a frog!” That rough voice became part of the point. Nashville already had plenty of beautiful singers. What it didn’t have was another Kris Kristofferson.

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When Kris Kristofferson Said He Couldn’t Sing, Nashville Heard Something Else Before Kris Kristofferson became one of country music’s most…

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SHE CAME TO NASHVILLE FROM CANADA AT 18. IN 2004, TERRI CLARK BECAME THE FIRST — AND STILL ONLY — CANADIAN WOMAN TO JOIN THE GRAND OLE OPRY. Terri Clark grew up in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with country music already in the family. Her grandparents, Ray and Betty Gauthier, had performed with stars like Johnny Cash and George Jones. But Nashville did not hand Terri anything. At 18, she left Canada and headed south, playing places like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge for tips while trying to convince somebody that her voice belonged on country radio. Years later, that journey came full circle on the Grand Ole Opry stage. In 2004, Steve Wariner told Terri he had a surprise. Then her mother walked out carrying a sign with four words and a date: “Grand Ole Opry — June 12.” That was the night Terri learned she was becoming an Opry member. The Canadian girl who once played Nashville bars for tips had made it to country music’s most famous stage — and her mother got to tell her.

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Terri Clark’s Long Road from Canada to the Grand Ole Opry Terri Clark’s story has the kind of beginning that…

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HE MET HER AT A DAIRY QUEEN. FORTY-SIX YEARS LATER, SHE’S STILL THE ONE HOLDING HIM UP. Alan Jackson was fifteen. Denise was seventeen. Newnan, Georgia, a parking lot, an ordinary afternoon. They married in 1979 — before the hits, before the hat, before anyone in Nashville knew his name. She worked as a flight attendant and put his demo into the right hands. She believed in him when believing in him wasn’t obvious. Then came the songs. The stadiums. Three daughters. A career built on singing about ordinary lives, written by a man who never stopped living one. In 2021 he told the world he has a nerve disease that’s slowly taking his balance. He’d been quiet about it for years. Standing on a stage — the thing he’d done ten thousand times — had become the hard part. He’s still touring. Slower now. Steadier when she’s near. The man who wrote “Remember When” is living the second half of it. Some artists spend a lifetime writing about love. He married his at seventeen and never had to look anywhere else for material.

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He Met Her at a Dairy Queen. Forty-Six Years Later, She Is Still the One Holding Him Up Before Alan…

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THIRTEEN YEARS AFTER ZACH SWON CHOSE BLAKE SHELTON ON THE VOICE, BLAKE SHOWED UP FOR A MOMENT THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH TELEVISION — HIS WEDDING. Back in 2013, Zach and his brother Colton walked onto *The Voice*, turned three chairs, chose Blake Shelton, and eventually finished third as The Swon Brothers. The cameras stopped. The season ended. But apparently, the relationship did not. When Zach married Caroline Snyder in a countryside ceremony in Tennessee, Blake was there with Gwen Stefani among the guests. And the day was even more personal than that. Colton — Zach’s brother, bandmate, and the man who had stood beside him through their entire musical journey — officiated the ceremony himself. Zach later described the day as filled with family, new family, friends, music, laughter, tears, love and joy. Thirteen years after Blake became their coach, he was no longer sitting in a red chair. He was sitting in the crowd.

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Thirteen Years After Zach Swon Chose Blake Shelton on The Voice, Blake Showed Up for a Different Kind of Moment…

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FOUR MONTHS AFTER HE LOST JUNE, JOHNNY CASH WAS BLIND, IN A WHEELCHAIR, AND DYING — YET HE RECORDED 60 SONGS. The last one was finished 22 days before he died. The Man in Black passed away on September 12, 2003, at age 71. The official cause was complications from diabetes. But those closest to him said the truth was simpler — he never recovered from losing June. June Carter Cash, his wife of 35 years, had died just four months earlier. By then Johnny had lost most of his vision and could barely walk. Yet before she died, June whispered something to him that he obeyed like a sacred command. He repeated her words to producer Rick Rubin days later: “You have to keep me working — because I will die if I don’t have something to do.” What followed was one of the most haunting recording sprees in music history. Sixty songs in four months. A final public performance where he read a tribute to June he had written minutes before walking onstage. And one last song — finished just 22 days before he died — about a doomed man whose dying words were “Nearer, my God, to Thee.” He wasn’t recording an album. He was saying goodbye.

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Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash, and the Sound of a Goodbye Four months can feel like a blink or an…

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SHE WON THE FIRST ACM TOP FEMALE VOCALIST AWARD. THEN SHE GAVE UP HER OWN SPOTLIGHT TO HELP BUILD MERLE HAGGARD’S — AND KEPT SINGING BESIDE HIM FOR MORE THAN TWO DECADES AFTER THEIR DIVORCE. Before Nashville knew her name, Bonnie Owens was waiting tables at Bakersfield’s Blackboard, raising two sons after her marriage to Buck Owens ended. She sang when she could and wrote lyrics on cocktail napkins. Then came Merle Haggard. They married in 1965, the same year Bonnie became the ACM’s first Top Female Vocalist. But as Merle’s career exploded, hers moved quietly behind his. She sang harmony, toured with his band, and became part of the sound surrounding some of country music’s most important records. Merle later admitted Bonnie had “sort of dropped the torch of her own career to stoke mine.” They divorced in 1978. Bonnie stayed. More than twenty years later, she was still appearing onstage with the man who was no longer her husband. Merle became a legend. Bonnie helped him become one. She died in 2006 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. Maybe country music should remember what she gave up — not only whose harmony she sang.

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Bonnie Owens: The Voice Behind a Legend Before Bonnie Owens became a familiar name in country music, she was already…

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EVERYONE THOUGHT THE CRUISE SHIP SHOW WAS HIS LAST GOODBYE. THEY WERE WRONG — HE CAME BACK ONE MORE TIME, AND NO ONE KNEW IT WAS HAPPENING. Kris Kristofferson never announced a farewell tour. His last full concert took place on January 30, 2020, aboard the Norwegian Pearl during the fifth Outlaw Country Cruise, backed by Merle Haggard’s band, the Strangers. He didn’t reveal that he’d quietly retired until a press release in January 2021, citing age and pandemic concerns. Yet retirement wasn’t quite the end. In April 2023, at Willie Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl, Kristofferson stepped out unannounced for two nights, joining Rosanne Cash and later Norah Jones for duets of songs he’d written decades earlier. His voice was rougher, his steps slower, but the warmth was unmistakable. Those Hollywood Bowl appearances turned out to be his true final performances before he passed away on September 29, 2024, at 88. So maybe the real ending wasn’t a stage at all — it was a surprise, a duet, a smile flashed at an audience that didn’t know it was witnessing goodbye. With Kristofferson, the songs never really stopped; they just found new voices to carry them forward.

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The Surprise Goodbye No One Recognized Until It Was Too Late For years, fans of Kris Kristofferson carried a quiet…

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MERLE HAGGARD HAD 38 NUMBER-ONE HITS. THE SONG THAT DEFINED HIM WASN’T ONE OF THEM. IT NEVER CHARTED AT ALL. Everyone knows “Okie from Muskogee.” Many know “Mama Tried.” But the song other artists have recorded more than anything else Haggard ever wrote was buried on the back of a 45 nobody was supposed to flip over. In 1967, Haggard was falling out of love with his wife, Bonnie Owens, and planning to leave her. She knew. They were walking through an airport when he looked over at her and said he thought he’d started loving her again today. She told him to turn the line around. He wrote the rest a few days later, alone in a motel room in Dallas. On February 1, 1968 — the day after cutting his next No. 1 — he recorded it in a single session and stuck it on the B-side. It wasn’t a love song. It was a man telling his wife to her face that he’d been packed and ready to go, and had changed his mind. Some songs are pushed to No. 1. This one never charted — and outlived every song that did. Have you heard Merle’s own version — or only somebody else’s?

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HE DIDN’T RECORD A COVER. HE RECORDED HIS OWN EULOGY — AND EVERYONE INVOLVED KNEW IT. “Hurt” isn’t a song about addiction. It’s a man reading his own ledger out loud. Trent Reznor wrote it in his twenties, from inside the wreck. Cash sang it at seventy, from the far side of it — the same words, but one man was predicting and the other was confirming. Watch the video again. The House of Cash museum, shuttered. The dust. A banquet table set with more food than anyone could eat, and nobody sitting at it. His hands, too unsteady now to be certain of the strings. And June, on the staircase, watching him. This is for anyone who has ever looked at everything they built and seen the invoice instead of the achievement. That’s the part that breaks you. Not that he was dying. That she was standing right there — and she would go first. Four months later, she did. He followed in four more. Sometimes a man doesn’t get to apologize. He only gets to be heard. When was the last time you sat all the way through it — and what were you going through when you did?

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TO A STADIUM FULL OF FANS, HE WAS ALAN JACKSON. TO THREE WOMEN IN THE CROWD, HE WAS STILL DADO. At Alan Jackson’s final concert in Nashville, the world came to say goodbye to a country music icon. But in one family box sat the people who had known him before the white hat became history. His wife, Denise. His daughters, Mattie, Ali, and Dani. The family that watched the road take him away night after night — and watched the songs bring him home again. After the show, Mattie Jackson Smith called the night “surreal,” “humbling,” and unforgettable. She wrote that his music had crossed generations because he always sang the truth. That is the part fans felt too. For more than three decades, Alan Jackson gave strangers songs for weddings, funerals, backroads, heartbreaks, and Sunday memories. But before he belonged to country music, he belonged to them. And maybe that is what made the final bow so powerful. The icon stood in front of the world. The father stood in front of his girls.

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HE WROTE “ME AND BOBBY McGEE,” “HELP ME MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT,” AND “SUNDAY MORNIN’ COMIN’ DOWN.” THEN A RECORD LABEL ASKED KRIS KRISTOFFERSON TO SING HIS OWN SONGS — AND HE TOLD THEM, “I CAN’T SING. I SOUND LIKE A FROG!” Before Nashville, Kris Kristofferson had already been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Golden Gloves boxer, an Army Ranger and a helicopter pilot. The Army planned to send him to West Point to teach English, but in 1965 he left the service and chose songwriting instead. In Nashville, he worked as a janitor at Columbia’s studio while artists including Bob Dylan recorded there. He tried getting songs to Johnny Cash through June Carter, but the tapes disappeared into the mountain of material Cash received. Then came the story Nashville never forgot. Kris really did land a helicopter on Cash’s property — but Cash wasn’t home. Kristofferson later laughed at the embellished version involving a beer and “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.” Cash eventually became one of his greatest champions. And when Fred Foster signed Kris to Monument as a recording artist, Kristofferson could hardly believe it. “I can’t sing,” he told him. “I sound like a frog!” That rough voice became part of the point. Nashville already had plenty of beautiful singers. What it didn’t have was another Kris Kristofferson.