Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

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AT 33, THE FORMER SAN QUENTIN INMATE WALKED INTO THE CMA AWARDS — AND LEFT WITH FOUR TROPHIES. Eleven years earlier, Merle Haggard had been sitting inside San Quentin, watching Johnny Cash perform for the prisoners. On October 14, 1970, Merle entered Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium as one of country music’s biggest stars. The road between those two rooms had not been clean or easy. After prison, he worked ordinary jobs, played small clubs, and wrote about people who carried mistakes, empty pockets, and hard-earned pride. That night, the CMA called his name four times. Merle won Entertainer of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year. Okie from Muskogee took Album of the Year, while its title track was named Single of the Year. No other artist won more that evening. The trophies did not erase his prison record. Merle never pretended the past had disappeared. They proved something more powerful: a man once locked away from the world had turned his failures into songs the whole country wanted to hear. At 33, Merle Haggard was no longer asking for another chance. Country music had already given him its highest seat.

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Merle Haggard’s Big Night at the CMA Awards: How a Former Prison Inmate Became Country Music’s Hero At 33, Merle…

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AT 71, JOHNNY CASH COULD BARELY WALK TO THE MICROPHONE — BUT HE STILL SANG FOR THE WOMAN WHO WASN’T THERE. On July 5, 2003, seven weeks after June Carter Cash died, Johnny arrived at the Carter Family Fold in Virginia in a wheelchair. But Hiltons resident Pat Jones remembered one detail clearly: “He insisted on walking into the Fold that night.” Two men helped Johnny reach the chair waiting beneath the microphone. His body looked fragile. Then he spoke five familiar words: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” For thirty minutes, he sang the songs that had carried him through half a century. Before “Ring of Fire,” he told the crowd that June’s spirit was with him, giving him courage as she always had. June’s cousin Janette Carter gently broke the sadness with a line June once used: “Johnny Cash was already plugged in when she met him.” The room answered with laughter, tears, and applause. Johnny closed with “Understand Your Man,” a song he had not performed live in twenty-five years. No one knew it was his final public performance. Sixty-nine days later, he was gone. But that night, he had found enough strength to sing one more time—somewhere between the audience and June.

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Johnny Cash’s Final Public Song at the Carter Family Fold On July 5, 2003, Johnny Cash made one of the…

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THE STROKE TOOK HER VOICE AT 85. THE BROKEN HIP TOOK HER ABILITY TO STAND. AT 88, FROM A STUDIO BUILT INSIDE HER OWN HOUSE, SHE RECORDED HER FIFTIETH ALBUM AND NAMED IT STILL WOMAN ENOUGH. She was Loretta Lynn — the coal miner’s daughter from Butcher Hollow, Kentucky who married at thirteen, raised four children before twenty, and changed country music by writing the songs other women were too afraid to sing. In May 2017, a stroke ended fifty-seven years of touring overnight. Eight months later, on January 1, 2018, she fell at her Hurricane Mills ranch and broke her hip. She was 85. Most artists in her position would have called it a career. Her family told her to rest. Her doctors said she wouldn’t sing again. Loretta looked her own broken body in the eye and said: “No.” There’s a reason Loretta refused to leave Hurricane Mills after the stroke — a reason that has everything to do with the small cemetery on the property where her husband Doo was buried in 1996. In March 2021, at 88 years old, she released Still Woman Enough. Fifty albums. A title pulled from a song she’d written five decades earlier. She brought Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, and Tanya Tucker onto the title track — three generations of women singing back the line she’d given them. She died nineteen months later, on October 4, 2022, in her sleep at the ranch. She was 90. Her daughter Peggy was beside her. That’s not a final album. That’s a coal miner’s daughter who refused to let a stroke decide which song would be her last.

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Loretta Lynn’s Final Defiance: The Story Behind Still Woman Enough Loretta Lynn spent her life turning hard facts into songs.…

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BAKERSFIELD NEEDED TWO MEN: BUCK OWENS TO BUILD THE SOUND, AND MERLE HAGGARD TO GIVE IT A WOUNDED HEART. Nashville had strings, polished harmonies, and songs dressed for the radio. Three thousand miles west, Buck Owens wanted something sharper. With the Buckaroos behind him, he pushed electric guitars and a hard backbeat to the front. Records like “Act Naturally” and “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail” made Bakersfield sound bright, restless, and impossible to ignore. Then Merle Haggard brought a different weight into the room. He had known reform schools, prison walls, hard work, and the shame of watching his mother suffer for choices he had made. When Merle sang “Mama Tried,” “Sing Me Back Home,” or “Working Man Blues,” the sound no longer belonged only to dance halls. It belonged to men carrying lunch pails, families counting bills, and anyone who had ever wished they could undo the past. Buck gave Bakersfield its snap. Merle gave it scars. They were not the only artists who created that California sound. But together, they gave country music something Nashville could not polish away: a rhythm built for Saturday night, and a truth that still hurt on Sunday morning.

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Bakersfield Needed Two Men: Buck Owens to Build the Sound, and Merle Haggard to Give It a Wounded Heart Nashville…

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MERLE HAGGARD CHOSE THE FIRST SONG AT HIS FUNERAL — AND THE LAST ONE BELONGED TO HIS THREE SONS. Merle Haggard had spent a lifetime deciding exactly how a country song should begin and end. Before he died, he quietly did the same for his own funeral. The private service was held on April 9, 2016, at his property in Palo Cedro, California. Merle had planned it himself. To open the ceremony, a recording of his hero Lefty Frizzell singing “I Love You a Thousand Ways” filled the air. Then the people who had shared his road stepped forward. Connie Smith sang “Precious Memories.” She and Marty Stuart performed “Silver Wings.” Kris Kristofferson offered three songs, including “Sing Me Back Home” and “Pancho & Lefty.” But Merle had saved the final moment for family. His sons Marty, Noel, and Ben stood together and closed the service with “Today I Started Loving You Again.” For decades, strangers had used Merle’s songs to say what they could not put into words. That afternoon, his own sons did the same. Their father had chosen the beginning. He left the ending to them.

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Merle Haggard Chose the First Song at His Funeral — and the Last One Belonged to His Three Sons Merle…

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THEY HELD HIS FUNERAL AT WOODLAWN FUNERAL HOME IN NASHVILLE. 1,500 PEOPLE OVERFLOWED THE CHAPEL, INTO THREE SMALLER ROOMS, AND OUT INTO THE HALLWAY. Seventeen No. 1 hits. Two Grammys. The first Grammy ever awarded to a country song. Inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on October 11, 1982 — just eight weeks before the funeral. The night before the service, the funeral home opened its doors to the public. A woman named Gloria McCann and her father drove all night from Bainbridge, Georgia, just to sign the guest book. The guest book also held names from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Green Bay, Wisconsin. People came from everywhere because the music had reached everywhere. On the day of the funeral, Little Jimmy Dickens — who had helped discover Robbins nearly 30 years earlier — walked past the silver casket and wept openly. Brenda Lee stood nearby wiping tears from her eyes and said: “He made every fan and every person a part of whatever he was. When the fans voted, Marty always won.” The pastor offered the only eulogy: “The doctors did an awful good job of mending Marty’s heart. Marty himself mended thousands of broken hearts each year.” Then Brenda Lee sang One Day at a Time, and the room went quiet. He was 57. Nashville had just put his name in the Hall of Fame. It had no idea it was already saying goodbye.

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Marty Robbins: The Night Nashville Said Goodbye When Nashville gathered to say goodbye to Marty Robbins, the city did what…

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WHEN LORETTA LYNN DIED IN HER SLEEP ON A TUESDAY MORNING IN OCTOBER 2022, THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR SENT A CODED TEXT TO HER STAFF: “SNOW HAS FALLEN IN HURRICANE MILLS.” BY FRIDAY, A BLACK HEARSE LED BY THE COUNTY SHERIFF WAS CARRYING THE COAL MINER’S DAUGHTER FROM HER MANSION TO THE FAMILY CEMETERY ON THE SAME RANCH SHE’D CALLED HOME FOR OVER FIFTY YEARS. Close to a hundred guests gathered for the private graveside service. Outside the property gate, fans who had driven from as far as North Dakota stood in silence, laying flowers and watching the hearse roll past. One woman wept as the procession disappeared down the road. “Never thought I’d be here for this,” she said. Three weeks later, the Grand Ole Opry House held a televised public memorial. Stars lined the stage. Then a pre-recorded message from Loretta herself filled the room: “To my friends, thank you for giving me such a great life.” She was ninety years old, buried beside her husband Doolittle, right where she wanted to be — home in Hurricane Mills.

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Loretta Lynn’s Final Journey Home to Hurricane Mills Loretta Lynn’s story ended where so much of her life had already…

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ALAN JACKSON WROTE HIS FATHER’S EULOGY. THEN TOLD EVERYONE IT WAS JUST A SONG. In 2007, Alan Jackson released “Small Town Southern Man.” It sounded like exactly what the title promised — a warm, easy song about growing up in a quiet town. The kind of thing you hear on the radio and nod along to without thinking twice. Nobody was supposed to think twice. Because every detail in that song matched one man. A car mechanic at the Ford plant. Married young. Never left the house he moved into fifty-three years ago. Raised four daughters. Then one more child came along — a boy, unplanned. Alan Jackson was that boy. Daddy Gene died in 2000. Seven years later, his son stood in a recording booth and sang every detail of his father’s life without ever saying his name. When interviewers asked, Alan shrugged it off. Just a song about small-town life. Nothing personal. But Alan once said something most people missed: “I learned more about my daddy after he died than I did when he was alive.” He did not write a eulogy. He hid one where only the people who listened closely enough would find it.

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Alan Jackson Wrote His Father’s Eulogy, Then Told Everyone It Was Just a Song When Alan Jackson released “Small Town…

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BONNIE OWENS DIVORCED MERLE HAGGARD IN 1978. YEARS LATER, HE CALLED AND ASKED HER TO COME BACK ON THE ROAD. Owens was never merely the woman standing behind his microphone. She had records of her own, won the ACM’s Top Female Vocalist honor in 1965 and received co-writing credit on “Today I Started Loving You Again.” So why would an artist with her own place in Bakersfield history return to the band of the ex-husband she had left? Their divorce became final in October 1978. That same month, Haggard married singer Leona Williams—with Bonnie serving as a bridesmaid. After years apart professionally, Bonnie rejoined the Strangers and once again became part of Haggard’s stage sound. She had remarried by then, and illness eventually forced her to retire. Her return was not a 28-year vigil for a former husband. The sentence Haggard used when he called her back reveals something more complicated about the place she held in his music.

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Bonnie Owens, Merle Haggard, and the Call That Brought Her Back on the Road When people remember the classic Bakersfield…

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38 NUMBER ONE HITS. AND PEOPLE STILL CALL HIM “THE CONVICT.” Merle Haggard was born in a converted boxcar. His father died when he was nine. By twenty, he was prisoner A45200 at San Quentin. He saw Johnny Cash play inside those walls. Something broke open. When he got out in 1960, he dug ditches for his brother. Played honky-tonks for beer money. Nobody was waiting for him. Then came “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive.” Number one. Then “Mama Tried.” Then “Okie from Muskogee.” Then thirty-five more. He wrote over 250 songs. Recorded nearly 70 albums. Pioneered an entire sound out of Bakersfield that made Nashville nervous. Country Music Hall of Fame. Grammy Lifetime Achievement. Kennedy Center Honor. A full pardon from Ronald Reagan. He kept touring into his late seventies. Died on his 79th birthday, on his tour bus, still on the road. San Quentin held him for three years. Music held him for fifty-six. Maybe it’s time we stopped introducing him as an ex-con — and started introducing ourselves as his fans.

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Merle Haggard: The Life Behind 38 Number One Hits For a long time, people tried to reduce Merle Haggard to…

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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.

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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.