COUNTRY MUSIC TIMELINE - kenburns … · COUNTRY MUSIC TIMELINE 1620 John Utie, considered by historians as the first fiddler in the Americas, arrives in Jamestown, having emigrated

COUNTRY MUSIC TIMELINE

1620

John Utie, considered by historians as the first fiddler in the Americas, arrives in

Jamestown, having emigrated from England. Fiddles are soon played widely at

dances and other entertainments and will be for decades to come. Even George

Washington has a favorite fiddle tune: “Jaybird Sittin’ on a Hickory Limb.”

ca. 1700

“The Bard of Armagh,” an old Irish ballad, is composed, often attributed to Irish

Bishop Patrick Donnelly. Its tune becomes the basis for the cowboy ballad, “The

Streets of Laredo,” centuries later, just one of many Old World melodies that are

adapted in the New World.

1736

Late November: The first recorded North American fiddle contest is advertised

as part of a St. Andrew’s Day Celebration in Hanover County, Virginia.

ca. 1785

“The Old Plantation,” an anonymous folk painting from the 1700s, depicts slaves

dancing and playing the banjo, an instrument brought by slaves from Africa, via

the Caribbean, to North America.

1833

September 9: C. F. Martin emigrates with his young family from Germany to the

United States, where he sets up the C. F. Martin & Company guitar factory and

retail store on Hudson Street in New York’s Lower West Side.

1870

October 7: Old-time banjo player, singer, and comedian David Harrison Macon

– a.k.a., “Uncle Dave” Macon, a.k.a., “the Dixie Dew Drop” – is born in Smartt

Station, Tennessee.

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1877

December: Working in his Menlo Park, New Jersey lab, Thomas Alva Edison

invents the first phonograph, successfully playing back a recording of “Mary’s

Little Lamb” from a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a spinning cylinder. He

becomes known as “the Wizard of Menlo Park.”

ca. 1878

Fiddlin’ John Carson, then ten years old, receives his first fiddle, a gift from his

grandfather.

1891

December 15: Alvin Pleasant Delaney Carter – “A.P.” – is born in Poor Valley,

Virginia. His mother blames the lifelong tremor in his voice and hands on a

lightning bolt that struck the ground near her shortly before his birth.

1892

May 22: Ralph S. Peer is born in Kansas City, Missouri, son of a store owner who

sells, among other things, records and gramophones.

1897

September 8: Jimmie Rodgers, “The Father of Country Music,” is born just north

of Meridian, Mississippi.

1898

July 21: Sara Carter (née Dougherty), founding member of the Carter Family

known for her rich alto singing voice, is born in Copper Creek, Virginia.

1899

December 14: Harmonica player DeFord Bailey is born into a farming family in

rural Smith County, Tennessee.

1902

Kalamazoo, Michigan native Orville Gibson founds the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar

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Mfg Co Ltd to produce acoustic guitars and mandolins based on the arch-top

design of the violin.

1903

September 15: Roy Acuff, the “King of Country Music,” often credited with

moving country music from a string-band format to a singer-based format, is

born in Maynardville, Tennessee.

1905

March 6: Bob Wills, popular Western Swing co-founder, bandleader, composer,

and fiddler, is born in Kosse, Texas.

1907

September 29: Singer, songwriter, and businessman Gene Autry, who gains fame

as a singing cowboy on radio, in films, and on television, is born in Tioga, Texas.

1909

May 10: Maybelle Carter (née Addington) is born in Nickelsville, Virginia.

Founding member of the Carter Family, she is a professional musician for nearly

her entire life, known for her innovative “Carter scratch” guitar style.

1911

September 13: Bill Monroe, the “Father of Bluegrass,” is born in Rosine,

Kentucky.

1912

October 25: Sarah Ophelia Colley is born into a well-to-do household in

Centerville, Tennessee. Years later, fans know her as Minnie Pearl.

1914

February 9: Honky tonk pioneer Ernest Tubb is born in Crisp, Texas.

May 9: “The Singing Ranger” Hank Snow is born in Nova Scotia, Canada.

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June 19: Bluegrass guitarist and singer Lester Flatt is born in Duncan’s Chapel,

Tennessee.

1915

June 18: Sara and A.P. Carter marry.

1918

May 15: Eddy Arnold, the “Tennessee Plowboy,” is born on a farm near

Henderson, Tennessee.

1920

Polk Brockman returns to his family furniture store in Atlanta and sees that

phonographs can sell, but only if there are records people like. The following

year, Brockman becomes a regional distributor for Okeh records.

November 2: KDKA in Pittsburgh makes the first commercial radio broadcast.

Within four years there are 600 commercial stations across the United States.

December 19: Little Jimmy Dickens is born in tiny Bolt, West Virginia.

1922

March 16: The Atlanta Journal begins operating WSB, the South’s first high-

powered radio station, whose call letters stand for “Welcome South, Brother.”

June 30: Fiddlers Uncle Eck Robertson and Henry Gilliland, dressed respectively

in a cowboy suit and a Confederate uniform, appear unannounced at NYC’s

Victor studios and ask to be auditioned. Several selections are recorded and

released, including Robertson’s “Sallie Gooden” and “Arkansas Traveler.”

September 9: John Carson, by then seven-time Georgia fiddler champion and

dubbed “Fiddlin’ John,” is the first country musician to play on WSB.

1923

January 4: Fort Worth, Texas station WBAP launches its show Barn Dance, the

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first country radio variety show in the nation, featuring 1.5 hours of square

dance music. Listener response is the largest the station has ever experienced.

January 25: Record producer Sam Phillips is born in Florence, Alabama.

As owner and producer of Sun Records, Phillips plays a critical role in the

development of rock and roll and will jump start the careers of Elvis Presley,

Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and Howlin’ Wolf,

among others.

June 14: Okeh talent scout Ralph Peer brings recording engineers to Atlanta in

search of new black artists for their “race” records. At Polk Brockman’s urging,

Peer records country artist Fiddlin’ John Carson’s “Little Old Log Cabin in the

Lane.” It is the first money-making country record, selling all 500 copies of its

first run locally and encouraging Peer to release it as Okeh 4890, country’s first

commercially-marketed single. Other recording companies quickly follow suit.

September 17: Hank Williams is born in a dirt-floored log house in Mount Olive,

Alabama, southwest of Montgomery.

September 20: Dr. John R. Brinkley acquires a license for radio station KFKB

– “Kansas First, Kansas Best” – in Milford, Kansas as a broadcasting vehicle to

promote his patented “goat gland” sex operation.

1924

Ernest “Pop” Stoneman travels to Peer’s NYC Okeh offices and records “The

Sinking of the Titanic,” the first of many hits for Stoneman and Peer.

Jimmie Rodgers, age 27, is diagnosed with tuberculosis. The disease ends

Rodgers’s railroad career and he turns to music as his last chance to support his

wife and daughter.

January 6: Earl Scruggs, bluegrass banjo pioneer known for his three-finger

picking style (“Scruggs style”) is born in rural Cleveland County, North Carolina.

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April 19: WLS-Chicago debuts the Radio Barn Dance (later called the National

Barn Dance), just one week after the station is officially launched. Stars will

include Gene Autry, George Goebel, and Red Foley.

June 20: Guitar wizard and renowned producer Chet Atkins is born in Luttrell,

Tennessee.

August 13: Affecting a Texas accent, classically-trained Vernon Dalhart records

“The Prisoner’s Song,” backed by “The Wreck of the Old 97” and released as

Victor 19427. Over the next three years, it will become the first country record

to sell a million copies.

1925

January 15: At an Okeh recording session in NYC, “hillbilly music” gets its name

when Al Hopkins tells Peer to call his band anything he wants, saying, “we are

nothing but a bunch of hillbillies.” Peer calls them The Hill Billies.

Spring: Western Electric develops an electrical microphone-based recording

method, superseding mechanical or acoustic recording horns. This new process

paves the way for enhanced fidelity and is called “Orthophonic.”

July 27: Charlie Poole, the best-known banjo player in the nation, records

“Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down Blues” at Columbia Records in NYC. The record

sells over 106,000 copies at a time when there are estimated to be only 6,000

phonographs in the southern United States.

August 27: Carter Stanley, the elder of the Stanley Brothers, is born on Big

Spraddle Creek, in Dickenson County, Virginia.

September 26: Marty Robbins is born in the southern Arizona desert, eight miles

from Glendale.

October 5: WSM begins broadcasting from atop the offices of Nashville’s

National Life and Accident Insurance Company, under the direction of Edwin

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Craig, son of the company’s founder.

November 2: With a sufficient catalog of songs to meet the anticipated demand,

Victor introduces a new brand of player to allow playback of the enhanced

records, the Orthophonic “Victrola.” The date becomes known as “Victor Day.”

November 28: George D. Hay, having been lured to WSM Nashville from WLS

Chicago by Edwin Craig, inaugurates the WSM Barn Dance (later renamed the

Grand Ole Opry) with its first broadcast. The only performer on the first show is

77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson.

December 26: Banjo player and Vaudeville entertainer Uncle Dave Macon, well

known across the southeastern U.S., performs on the WSM Barn Dance for the

first time. He will stay with the program until 1952.

1926

March 13: Maybelle Addington, Sara Carter’s cousin, marries Eck Carter, A.P.’s

younger brother. A.P., Sara, and Maybelle begin to sing and play music together

around the house.

June 19: DeFord Bailey, an African American harmonica player, becomes a

regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry, having appeared for the first time just

months after the show’s launch.

Henry Ford sponsors fiddle contests at Ford dealerships in hundreds of

communities across the U.S., hoping to turn the tastes of the nation away from

jazz – which represents everything he considers wrong with the country’s moral

direction – and back toward what he considered a more virtuous past.

Ralph Peer signs on with Victor Talking Machine Company (aka, Victor Records),

having left Okeh in 1925. He agrees to work for a salary of just $1/year, with the

understanding that he will hold the copyright to all music recorded. To manage

the copyrights, Peer forms the Southern Publishing Company and offers the

artists he records a share of the royalties, giving them a stake in the songs’

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success. For the three-month period just one year after Peer’s deal with Victor,

the royalty payment to Southern Publishing on songs he’s recorded amounts to a

quarter of a million dollars.

1927

February 25: Ralph Stanley is born on Big Spraddle Creek in rural southwest

Virginia, 18 months after the birth of his brother and partner, Carter.

Late July: Ralph Peer and two engineers arrive in Bristol, a city straddling the

Tennessee-Virginia border, to record hillbilly acts and boost Victor’s old time

catalog. He records ten tracks with Stoneman and, on July 27, runs an ad in the

Bristol News, seeking more musicians.

August 1 and 2: The Carter Family make their first recordings in Bristol,

Tennessee. The group records four songs the first evening and Maybelle and Sara

return the following morning to record two more.

August 4: Jimmie Rodgers makes his first recordings in Bristol, having split from

the band with whom he’d intended to record the night before. Though he sings

only two songs, yodeling on one of them, Rodgers assures Peer that he can come

up with more in no time.

November 30: Rodgers shows up unannounced in New York City and records

four sides for Victor, including a standard twelve-bar blues melody to which he

adds what he calls a “blue yodel.” Peer releases the song as “Blue Yodel (T for

Texas)” the following spring. It is an instant and massive hit.

December 10: George D. Hay begins the weekly WSM Barn Dance broadcast,

following the New York Symphony, by saying “We [have] been listening to music

taken largely from grand opera. From now on, we will present the ‘grand ol’

opry.’” Within a few weeks, the program’s name is officially changed to the Grand

Ole Opry. It will be the longest-running show on American radio.

Late 1927: Newly-married Bob Wills moves to Roy, New Mexico, where

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he works as a barber and forms a band with Hispanic-American musicians,

developing a style of playing that incorporates their sound and the sound of

African-American blues.

1928

March 31: Honky tonker Lefty Frizzell is born in Corsicana, Texas.

May 10: The Carter Family travels to Victor’s Camden, New Jersey studio

and records twelve songs, including their standard, “Wildwood Flower;” it is

Maybelle’s 19th birthday. The recording is regarded as the premier example of

her “Carter Scratch” style, in which she plays both the melody and rhythm lines

simultaneously. It will become one of the most widely copied guitar styles in

music history.

Mid-July: With multiple songs recorded – including “In the Jailhouse Now” and

“Blue Yodel Number Two” – Jimmie Rodgers’s royalties climb to $1,000/month.

Summer: On a song-gathering trip to Kingsport, Tennessee, A.P. Carter meets

blues guitarist and singer Lesley Riddle, beginning a decade-long collaboration.

Riddle expands the Carter’s catalog by learning songs gathered on the road

with A.P., introduces them to hymns sung in African-American Pentecostal and

Baptist churches, and shares blues guitar stylings with Maybelle.

1929

March 13: Future singing star Jan Howard is born in West Plains, Missouri.

June 23: June Carter, second daughter of Maybelle and Eck Carter, is born in

Maces Springs, Virginia.

August: The Carter Family has sold 700,000 records in the two years since first

recording with Peer in Bristol. Session fees and royalties are enough for A.P. to

obtain more land, for Maybelle to purchase a bigger Gibson guitar ($275), and

for both Sara and Maybelle to buy motorcycles.

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October 9: Gene Autry makes his first recordings for an assortment of discount

labels: covers of Jimmie Rodgers songs and the occasional risqué song, like “High

Steppin’ Mama” and “She’s a Hum Hum Dinger.”

October 29: Known as “Black Tuesday,” the stock market crashes and the nation

descends into the Great Depression. The recording industry is hit hard: between

1929 and 1930, record sales plummet in the U.S. from $74 million to $46 million

and then to $17 million in 1931.

1930

July 11: Jimmie Rodgers records “Mule Skinner Blues” (Blue Yodel No. 8) in Los

Angeles; five days later, on July 16, he records “Standing on the Corner” (Blue

Yodel No. 9) with 28-year-old jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong.

Crazy Water Crystals begins aggressive radio advertising, sponsoring country

music groups (many of which agree to add “Crazy” to their name). By 1934, the

company is spending $283,000/year on radio.

1931

At age eight, Hank Williams receives his first guitar and within a few years, his

family now living in Georgiana, Alabama, he begins taking lessons from street

musician Rufus “Tee Tot” Payne. Payne teaches Williams chords and allows the

boy to follow him as he plays for handouts.

January: A friend of fiddler Bob Wills persuades Burrus Mills, makers of Light

Crust Dough, to sponsor Wills and singer Milton Brown and their band on KFJZ

in Fort Worth, Texas. The band becomes known as The Light Crust Doughboys.

June 12: The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers record together in Louisville,

Kentucky. Jimmie sings two duets with Sara (the only duets Rodgers would ever

record).

September 12: George Jones is born in Saratoga, Texas, but raised in Vidor: a

small “oil patch” northeast of Beaumont.

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October 21: Dr. John R. Brinkley’s XERA begins operations in Villa Acuña,

Mexico, launching the border station era. Beyond the reach of American

regulators, XERA and other “border blaster” stations reach as much as 500,000

watts in strength – signals so powerful that local ranchers hear programs on

their barbed wire fences.

October 29: Gene Autry records his first hit, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine.”

His producer, Art Satherly, encourages him to continue developing his own style,

advising him to emphasize his western roots. The change pays off when Satherly

lands him a job as “the Oklahoma Yodeling Cowboy” on a WLS Chicago morning

show.

December: Gene Autry begins appearing on WLS Chicago with his own show,

“Conqueror Record Time,” and becomes a regular on National Barn Dance.

1932

Tex Ritter is a hit at the Madison Square Garden rodeo and on WOR New York’s

radio show The Lone Star Rangers. Song of the Gringo, the first of Ritter’s more than

eighty Western feature films, hits theaters in 1936.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. record market bottoms out at 6

million records sold.

February 26: Johnny Cash is born in Kingsland, Arkansas. His parents, unable to

agree upon a name for their third son, settle on the initials “J.R.”

April 14: Loretta Lynn is born in a small cabin in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky.

August 8: Mel Tillis is born in Dover, Florida.

September: Milton Brown leaves The Light Crust Doughboys and forms the

world’s first Western swing band in Fort Worth, Texas: The Musical Brownies.

Bob Wills auditions 67 vocalists to replace Brown in the Doughboys before

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finding replacement Tommy Duncan.

September 8: Patsy Cline, née Virginia Patterson Hensley, is born in Winchester,

Virginia.

November 10: WSM begins transmitting as a 50,000-watt “clear channel” station

from its new transmitting tower south of Nashville, said to be the tallest in the

nation. The Grand Ole Opry can now be heard coast-to-coast.

1933

Prohibition is repealed and local beer joints – “honky tonks” and dance halls –

begin appearing throughout America, impacting the sound and style of country

music: amplified guitars and microphones are needed to cut through the

noise and more raucous, danceable tunes about drinking and heartache take

precedence.

The rise in jukeboxes at bars and other locations leads to a boost in record

production. By 1940, there will be more than 30,000 jukeboxes in operation

across the country.

January 7: West Virginia’s WWVA broadcasts its first Saturday night Jamboree

program that will help launch the careers of Grandpa Jones, Hawkshaw Hawkins,

Hank Snow, and others. Increasing its power to 50,000 watts in 1942, its signal

reaches Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and parts of Canada.

Mid-March: With $35 in their pockets, cotton sharecroppers Lula and Charlie

Maddox leave their home in Boaz, Alabama, walking with their children to a new

life in California. They stop en route in Meridian, Mississippi, where they learn to

ride the rails.

April 29: The Delmore Brothers – Alton and Rabon – join the Grand Ole Opry.

During the week, they tour and develop a close friendship with DeFord Bailey,

the Opry’s only African American. In the segregated South, the Delmores “stick

by me through thick and thin,” DeFord later recalls.

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April 29: Willie Nelson is born in Abbott, Texas. By age 12, he has written enough

songs to compile a makeshift songbook.

May 24: Jimmie Rodgers lays down four tracks during his last session with Victor

in New York City. Weak from advanced tuberculosis, he has to rest between

each take on a cot in a nearby rehearsal room.

May 26: “The Father of Country Music” Jimmie Rodgers dies in NYC’s Taft Hotel,

leaving behind a legacy of music that will influence generations of country artists

to come.

May 29: Hundreds of mourners file past Jimmie Rodgers’s casket in Meridian,

Mississippi’s Scottish Rites Cathedral, after a special baggage car carries his

body home from New York on the Southern Railway.

June 17: The Carter Family records their classic hit, “Will the Circle Be

Unbroken.” A.P. has reworked the lyrics of the original into a vivid story about the

death and funeral of a beloved mother, reflecting the family’s profound grief and

faith in a heavenly reunion.

June 22: Gene Autry records “The Death of Jimmie Rodgers,” one of many

Jimmie Rodgers tribute songs of the time.

August: During the Chicago World’s Fair, WLS’s National Barn Dance is broadcast

remotely from an airplane circling the city. 35,000 people show up for the

fairground performance during “Farmers Week;” among those in the show are

Bill Monroe and his brothers, performing as square dancers.

September 30: WLS Chicago’s National Barn Dance, sponsored by Alka-Seltzer, is

heard coast-to-coast for the first time as part of the NBC network. Gene Autry is

the featured performer.

November 25: Jean Shepard is born into a sharecropper’s family in Pauls Valley,

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Oklahoma.

1934

January: Bob Wills – having left The Light Crust Doughboys and formed his band,

The Playboys, in 1933 – moves to Tulsa, renames the band The Texas Playboys,

and begins performing on radio station KVOO. Nearly all of the daily shows are

broadcast from Cains Ballroom, where 1500 fans regularly dance to his music.

March 18: Charley Pride is born on a cotton farm in Sledge, Mississippi, where

his father is sharecropper.

October 3: The Grand Ole Opry moves to the 750-seat Hillsboro Theatre, its first

home outside the WSM studios.

November 15: Gene Autry appears in his first movie, In Old Santa Fe. He wins his

first starring role a few months later in The Phantom Empire, released February

23, 1935. Autry moves to California and Republic Pictures cranks out ten B

movies starring him in less than two years.

1935

January: In Chicago recording sessions, Bob Dunn, guitar and steel guitar player

for the Musical Brownies, plays a self-designed electrically amplified guitar for

the first time in a recording session. The electrified steel guitar will define the

country & western sound for decades.

January 8: Elvis Presley is born in Tupelo, Mississippi.

August 16: Patsy Montana records her self-penned, “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s

Sweetheart.” The song portrays a woman who, like her boyfriend, wants to rope,

ride, and sleep out under the stars.

September: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys make their first record in a Dallas

warehouse under the direction of producer Art Satherly. The song, “Osage

Stomp,” is unlike anything previously heard, including the sounds of drummer

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Smokey Dacus, previously unthinkable for a country and western band.

September 5: At the time to renew his contract with Lone Star/Republic films,

John Wayne (a.k.a., “Singin’ Sandy”) refuses to be a singing cowboy any longer,

saying: “Get yourself another cowboy singer.”

1936

WLS Chicago’s National Barn Dance star Lulu Belle (née Myrtle Eleanor Cooper)

is voted America’s “Radio Queen:” the most popular woman radio entertainer –

in any genre.

January 2: Roger Miller is born in Fort Worth, Texas.

January 17: Sponsored by Crazy Water Crystals and based mainly out of

Charlotte, North Carolina’s 50,000-watt WBT, Brothers Bill and Charlie Monroe

make their first Bluebird recordings, including “What Would You Give in

Exchange for Your Soul?” – one of the biggest country music hits of the 1930s.

Spring: Ernest Tubb, singing and yodeling a la Jimmie Rodgers on KONO San

Antonio, meets his idol’s widow, Mrs. Carrie Rodgers, who helps Tubb land a

recording contract with RCA.

April 18: Milton Brown dies from complications after a car accident. More

popular than Bob Wills at the time, Brown – though instrumental to the creation

of Western Swing – would never achieve the fame of Wills, due in part to his

untimely death.

May 25: Tom T. Hall is born in Olive Hill, Kentucky.

June 13: With growing audience numbers, the Grand Ole Opry moves to the Dixie

Tabernacle in East Nashville, a barn-like structure accommodating 3,000 people.

June 22: Kris Kristofferson is born in Brownsville, Texas.

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October 15: Sara and A.P. Carter divorce. The family keeps the split quiet and

continues making records together.

November 28: Texas musician Al Dexter records his song “Honky Tonk Blues,”

likely the first country song to mention honky tonks. Dexter will later score with

his massive hit, “Pistol Packin’ Mama” (1943).

1937

April 6: Merle Haggard is born in Oildale, California, outside Bakersfield.

June: Pee Wee King, born Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski in Milwaukee, joins

the Grand Ole Opry. He insists the local musician’s union accept his band, the

Golden West Cowboys, and soon all of the Opry is unionized.

June 15: Waylon Jennings is born in Littlefield, Texas.

October: Roy Rogers (née Leonard Slye) auditions to be a singing cowboy for

Republic Studios. When Gene Autry walks out on his contract the following year,

Rogers is given the starring role in the film Under Western Stars. By 1943, Rogers

is tops at the box office with the nickname “King of the Cowboys.”

October 9: WLW Cincinnati broadcasts the inaugural Renfro Valley Barn Dance,

directed by John Lair and featuring Lily May Ledford and the Coon Creek Girls,

the first popular all-female string band.

October 20: Wanda Jackson, the “Queen of Rockabilly,” is born in Maud,

Oklahoma.

November 1: Bill Anderson is born in Columbia, South Carolina.

November: The Maddox Brothers and Rose begin performing on radio station

KTRB Modesto and are soon playing clubs and rodeos throughout California.

Two years later they win a musical competition at the Sacramento State Fair,

earning the title “California’s Best Hillbilly Band.”

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December: Hank Williams, age 14, wins the Montgomery, Alabama, Empire

Theater talent contest with his original song “WPA Blues.” He spends the

$15 prize money partying with friends. He is soon featured on WSFA radio

broadcasts as “the Singing Kid” and forms his band, the Drifting Cowboys.

December 9: Associated Features releases Harlem on the Prairie, the first in a

string of all-black Western musical feature films starring Herb Jeffries.

1938

January 21: Eddy Arnold and his friend, fiddler Speedy McNatt, start work at

radio station KWK St. Louis, performing on the early morning show as “Mac and

Ed, The Tennessee Harmony Lads.”

February 5: Roy Acuff performs on the Grand Ole Opry singing “The Great

Speckled Bird.” WSM listener response is enormous and Acuff and his band –

which changes its name from the Crazy Tennesseans to the Smoky Mountain

Boys – join the Opry two weeks later. Over the years, Acuff will become

synonymous with the Opry, performing on its stage until his death in 1992.

June 25: Bill and Charlie Monroe play their last show as a duo.

August 21: Kenny Rogers is born in Houston, Texas.

October: The Carter Family arrives in Del Rio, Texas, and begins performing on

500,000-watt “border blaster” station XERA, across the Rio Grande in Mexico.

Carter Family music is now transmitted as far away as New York City and

Alberta, Canada.

November: Wilbert Lee “Pappy” O’Daniel, the Burrus Mills general manager who

hired Bob Wills, creates his own product, Hillbilly Flour, and his own band, the

Hillbilly Boys, and uses them to win election as Texas governor. The practice will

be copied by Jimmie Davis to become governor of Louisiana – and lampooned by

the Coen Brothers in their 2000 feature film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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October 23: Bill Monroe and his new band, the Blue Grass Boys, audition for the

Grand Ole Opry. They are immediately accepted and their first performance is the

following Saturday, October 28. The audience goes wild for the new act.

1939

February: Sara Carter uses the power of 500,000-watt XERA to dedicate a song,

“I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes,” to Coy Bays, a former lover, during a

broadcast. Bays, 1600 miles away in Greenville, California, hears her singing and

drives to Del Rio, where he and Sara are married on February 20.

June: With huge crowds and no parking, the Grand Ole Opry is asked to leave East

Nashville and moves downtown to the War Memorial Auditorium. Admission

is charged for the first time – 25 cents – but the 2,200 seats are still sold out.

Performers are paid $5/broadcast and required to be on stage every Saturday

night.

June 8: The popular all-female string band, The Coon Creek Girls, performs

during King George VI and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the White House of

Franklin D. Roosevelt. Bandleader Lily May Ledford is nervous – until she sees

King George tapping his foot to the music.

Early August: In Dublin, during a tour of the British Isles, Gene Autry is greeted

by 300,000 fans.

Late September: The Carters arrive in Texas for their second season with XERA,

this time accompanied by Maybelle’s young daughters Helen, June, and Anita,

and Sara and A.P.’s daughter, Janette, who also sing on the program. The show

– the Good Neighbor Get-Together – is now recorded in San Antonio on Presto

transcription disks and shared with a number of additional border radio stations.

October 14: R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company sponsors a half-hour portion of the

Grand Ole Opry carried nationally over the NBC radio network, hosted by Roy

Acuff. By the end of the 1940s, advertising revue generates $600,000/year for

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WSM.

Late 1939: Thanks to a botched tonsillectomy, Ernest Tubb can no longer yodel

and is forced to stop imitating Jimmie Rodgers. His new vocal style is gravelly

and wavering, but also warm and instantly recognizable.

1940

Songwriter Fred Rose writes 16 songs for Gene Autry, having earlier written

“Red Hot Mama” and others for Sophie Tucker. Rose also writes “Blue Eyes

Crying in the Rain,” made famous decades later by Willie Nelson.

January: With a guaranteed salary of $15/week, “Smilin’ Eddy Arnold” joins

Pee Wee King and the Golden West Cowboys, based in Nashville. It is Arnold’s

big break; within three years he is on his own, performing solo on the Grand Ole

Opry.

January 7: Gene Autry’s radio show Melody Ranch debuts on the national CBS

Network, sponsored by Doublemint Gum.

April 16: Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys record “New San Antonio Rose,” vocal

by Tommy Duncan. An instant hit, it brings Wills national attention and becomes

his signature song. In the month of January 1941 alone, Bing Crosby’s cover sells

84,000 copies.

June 25: Republic Studios’ feature film Grand Ole Opry is released, starring Uncle

Dave Macon, Roy Acuff, and other country artists.

July 6: Jeannie Seely is born in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

November 30: Comedienne Minnie Pearl (Sarah Ophelia Colley in real life)

appears on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time, greeting the audience with

“Howwww-deee!” She remains a fixture on the show for more than 50 years.

Despite the Great Depression hanging on, Gene Autry earns $205,000 in

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1940, from songs, personal appearances, films, radio broadcasts, and from

merchandise, including lunch boxes, cowboy boots, and bicycles.

1941

January 1: Radio broadcasters impose a ban on all ASCAP songs after ASCAP,

responsible for collecting royalties, announces it is doubling its rate. The

stations switch to BMI, a competing group created by the National Association

of Broadcasters and featuring more hillbilly songs. Suddenly, Americans are

hearing more country music. ASCAP strikes a deal with broadcasters within

10 months but not before BMI establishes itself as a formidable music rights

company.

WSM managers fire DeFord Bailey during the 1941 ASCAP ban, later claiming

he would not learn any non-ASCAP songs. Bailey disputes this; he is not invited

back to the Opry stage until 1965.

March 27: The Sons of the Pioneers, featuring Roy Rogers, record the classic

Western song “Cool Water,” written by band member Bob Nolan. Influenced by

the English Romantic poets, Nolan had moved to Arizona as a teenager and fallen

in love with the desert landscape. Another Nolan song, “Tumbling Tumbleweeds,”

gives singer Gene Autry his second million-selling record.

May 28: Ernest Tubb’s “Walking the Floor Over You,” featuring an electric guitar

at the insistence of jukebox operators, is released, marking the rise of honky

tonk music.

August: R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and the Grand Ole Opry organize the

“Camel Caravan,” a traveling troupe of 20 entertainers, including Minnie Pearl

and young Eddy Arnold, that will cover 50,000 miles and 19 states by late 1942.

August 14: Connie Smith is born in Elkhart, Indiana.

August 23: Billboard declares “You Are My Sunshine” a “tavern and taproom

classic.” In 1944, it becomes the theme song for Jimmie Davis’s campaign for

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Louisiana governor.

November: Life magazine sends a photographer to Maces Spring for a cover

story on the Carter Family, now more popular than ever thanks to border radio

exposure. The story never runs, eclipsed by the December 7 bombing of Pearl

Harbor.

November 6: Guy Clark is born in Monahans, Texas.

November 16: With 35,000 people in attendance and a live broadcast on

Melody Ranch, tiny Berwyn, Oklahoma officially changes its name to Gene Autry,

Oklahoma.

December 8: The day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tommy Duncan tells

Bob Wills that he is enlisting in the army. Wills, though 36 at the time, enlists, as

well. Other country artists who join the service include Hawkshaw Hawkins, a

young singer from Huntington, West Virginia; Alton Delmore; Gene Autry, who

traded his $600,000/year income for a sergeant’s salary; and nearly 50 members

of the National Barn Dance.

1942

In the Armed Forces Network’s Munich Morning Report, Roy Acuff wins a two-

week popularity contest, receiving 600 more votes than his closest competitor,

Frank Sinatra. As a result, AFN institutes the Hillbilly Jamboree, a show produced

in Munich for American occupation forces in Europe. World War II, throwing

men from all parts of the country together, will nationalize country music.

March 19: Elton Britt records “There’s a Star-Spangled Banner Waving

Somewhere,” the story of a disabled backwoods boy who longs to serve his

country. It is one of the biggest hits of the World War II era, selling more than a

million records and 750,000 copies of sheet music.

May 5: Tammy Wynette – née Virginia Wynette Pugh – is born in Itawamba

County, Mississippi, near the Alabama border.

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June 26: Foreman Phillips converts a vacant ballroom on Venice Pier into the

venue for the Los Angeles Country Barn Dance. The inaugural show brings in a

crowd of 4,200. Bob Wills draws 6,200 the following week and Roy Acuff will

attract 11,130.

August: Hank Williams, age 18, is fired from Montgomery radio station WSFA for

habitual drunkenness.

October 14: Roy Acuff and songwriter Fred Rose establish Acuff-Rose music

publishing company in Nashville, exclusively for country music.

1943

January 16: Ronnie Milsap is born in Robbinsville, North Carolina.

February 13: Ernest Tubb joins the cast of the Grand Ole Opry and quickly

becomes one of its most recognizable stars.

March: After a season of performing on station WBT in Charlotte, North

Carolina, Sara Carter leaves to settle with husband Coy on a ten-acre cherry

orchard in California. The original Carter Family quietly and permanently

disbands.

June 1: Maybelle Carter and daughters Helen, June, and Anita ride the bus

from Bristol to Richmond, Virginia, and audition for WRNL. They perform on

the 5,000-watt local station for three years under their new name: The Carter

Sisters and Mother Maybelle. June becomes the act’s comedienne: backwoods

character “Aunt Polly.”

June 5: The Grand Ole Opry moves to the Ryman Auditorium: an imposing brick

tabernacle on Fifth Avenue in downtown Nashville, built in 1892, featuring pew

seating for 3,000 people on the floor level and in a large balcony known as the

Confederate Gallery. The Opry will stay at the Ryman for the next 31 years.

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1944

By 1944, there are more than 600 hillbilly radio programs broadcast on U.S.

radio stations – from tiny 100-watt WAGM, on Presque Isle, Maine to more than

20 powerful 50,000-watt stations around the country.

January 8: Billboard magazine makes its first attempt to rank individual record

sales of country music singles (then categorized as “Folk”), based on reports

of how often they are played on jukeboxes. Number one is Al Dexter’s “Pistol

Packin’ Mama.”

March 7: Townes Van Zandt is born in Fort Worth, Texas.

May 12, 1944: Johnny Cash’s older brother, Jack, is fatally injured cutting fence

posts when a saw blade rips into his stomach; he dies eight days later. Johnny

tells his mother he will honor Jack’s memory by becoming a gospel singer.

December 4: Eddy Arnold makes his first recordings for Victor at WSM’s Studio

B. It is the first recording session by a major label in Nashville, other than a lone

field-recording session in 1928.

December 11: Brenda Lee is born in Atlanta, Georgia.

December 15: Hank Williams marries Audrey Mae Sheppard who pushes Hank

to get his music in front of a larger audience.

1945

Spring: Husband-and-wife songwriting team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant meet

in Milwaukee’s Schroeder Hotel, where Felice is working as an elevator operator.

September 11: Ernest Tubb records in Nashville, adding momentum to the city

becoming a center of commercial recording.

December 8: After a successful audition for Bill Monroe at the Tulane Hotel in

Nashville, banjoist Earl Scruggs joins the Bluegrass Boys. The lineup of Scruggs

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on banjo, Chubby Wise on fiddle, Howard Watts (aka, Cedric Rainwater) on bass,

Lester Flatt on guitar and providing lead vocals, and Monroe on mandolin and

high tenor harmony becomes the prototype of the bluegrass sound.

1946

Fred, Cal, Cliff, and Don Maddox return from World War II and The Maddox

Brothers and Rose gets back together. Dressed in brightly colored costumes of

Hollywood tailor Nathan Turk, they call themselves “America’s Most Colorful

Hillbilly Band” and are known for their rowdy, high-energy shows, including the

electric guitar sound of Roy Nichols.

Nearly 300,000 jukeboxes are scattered around the nation in bars, diners,

and other entertainment establishments. New songs on the jukeboxes and

performed live by bands openly address post-war themes of cheating and

drinking and are driven by a new sound: electric guitar, drums, insistent bass, and

amplified voices that can cut through a noisy honky tonk.

January 11: Naomi Judd is born in Ashland, Kentucky.

January 14: Dolly Parton is born in a one-room cabin without running water,

electricity, or indoor plumbing in the foothills of Tennessee’s Great Smoky

Mountains.

June 19: Merle Haggard’s father, James, dies. Merle is nine years old. He will

spend much of his teenage years running from the law, arrested for truancy,

stealing cars, and escaping juvenile detention centers.

September 14: Hank Williams, accompanied by his wife Audrey, travels to

Nashville and meets with Fred Rose at Acuff-Rose Publishing. Williams signs

with Rose, who arranges for Williams’s first Nashville recording session and for

two of Williams’s songs to be recorded by Molly O’Day.

November 5: Gram Parsons, heir to a citrus empire, is born in Winter Haven,

Florida.

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December: Ralph and Carter Stanley, home from the war, form The Stanley

Brothers and the Clinch Mountain Boys. Bill Monroe fans, they pattern their

sound and instrumentation after the Blue Grass Boys and land a show on WNVA

in Norton, Virginia, sponsored by a local chain of Piggly Wiggly grocery stores.

1947

Early: Castle Recording Company, formed by three WSM engineers at the radio

station the year before, builds its studio in the former dining room on the second

floor of Nashville’s Tulane Hotel.

March 6: Hank Williams signs a recording contract with MGM Records.

April 2: Emmylou Harris is born in Birmingham, Alabama.

April 21: In his first MGM session, Hank Williams records “Move It on Over” at

Castle Studios in Nashville. The single reaches the Billboard charts in August and

becomes Williams’s first big hit, peaking at No. 4. Royalties allow him to buy his

first house and a fur coat for Audrey.

May 3: Ernest Tubb opens the Ernest Tubb Record Shop at 720 Commerce

Street in Nashville. Later that month, he launches the Midnight Jamboree,

broadcast live from the store following the Grand Ole Opry, to publicize the store

and help launch the careers of new country artists.

September 18-19: Minnie Pearl and Ernest Tubb headline two nights of Grand

Ole Opry cast performances at New York City’s Carnegie Hall. Billboard magazine

reports that fans go wild with enthusiasm.

October 31: Eddy Arnold headlines two country shows at Washington D.C.’s

Constitution Hall, arranged by Connie B. Gay. Both shows sell out, with

thousands turned away at the door.

November 8: Eddy Arnold’s “I’ll Hold You in My Heart” hits No. 1 on Billboard’s

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hillbilly chart, where it will stay for an unprecedented 21 weeks.

1948

Of the six No. 1 country songs in 1948, Eddy Arnold has five of them.

Leo Fender develops the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar, the

Broadcaster model, renamed the Telecaster in 1950. It becomes the favored

electric guitar by country performers and is later used by Buck Owens and the

Buckaroos to develop the “Bakersfield sound.”

Early 1948: Lester Flatt leaves Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys. When Earl

Scruggs joins him later, the two form a new band: The Foggy Mountain Boys.

January 10: 15-year old Loretta Lynn marries returning war veteran “Doolittle”

Lynn, the first boy she’s ever kissed. The two move to Washington state and soon

have four children. Recognizing the talent in Loretta’s singing vice, Doolittle

gives her a guitar.

April 3: As part of a series of letters, Fred Rose – a recovered alcoholic himself

– writes to Hank Williams and implores him to “forget the firewater.” The same

day, Hank and Audrey sell their house, determined to divorce. By the time the

divorce is finalized in May, they have reconciled.

May 31: The Maddox Brothers and Rose release “New Muleskinner Blues” on 4

Star Records – a super-charged electrified version of the Jimmie Rodgers classic.

August 1: Little Jimmy Dickens joins the Grand Ole Opry. At his death in 2015, he

has been a member for more than 66 years, longer than any other artist.

August 7: Hank Williams debuts on the Louisiana Hayride, KWKH–Shreveport,

and quickly becomes its top star.

Late Summer: The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle being performing on

WNOX Knoxville’s noontime Midday Merry-Go-Round radio show and meet Chet

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Atkins, a guitar virtuoso influenced by jazz stylist Django Reinhardt and the

finger-picking of Merle Travis. The Carters offer Chet an equal share of their

receipts and the new act is an instant success.

September 4: Eddy Arnold, the Opry’s biggest star, graces the Ryman stage as a

member of the Grand Ole Opry for the last time, leaving to headline his own CBS

network radio show. In the 15 years to come, he will lead all country artists in the

total number of Billboard Top 10s, with a total of 53.

September 25: The Stanley Brothers release “Molly and Tenbrook” on Rich-R-

Tone, having heard Bill Monroe perform it live and then copied it note-for-note

in the studio. Monroe is incensed; he has recorded it a year earlier but his label,

Columbia, has not yet released it.

December 22: Hank Williams insists on recording “Lovesick Blues,” despite the

objections of Fred Rose. Within a few moths of its early 1949 release, the song

reaches No. 1 and will stay on the charts for nearly a year.

December 25: Barbara Mandrell is born in Houston, Texas.

1949

January 31: Kitty Wells makes her first solo recordings for Victor.

May: Little Jimmy Dickens releases “Country Boy,” a song by Felice and Boudleax

Bryant. When Fred Rose first hears the song, he urges the Bryants to move to

Nashville, where they become the city’s first professional songwriters.

Early 1949: Hank Williams pays a visit to radio station KRIC in Beaumont, Texas.

17-year-old George Jones is the house band’s backup singer and guitarist.

Williams advises Jones to stop singing like Roy Acuff (Jones’s idol) and find his

own style.

May 26: Hank Williams Jr. is born to Hank and Audrey Williams in Shreveport,

Louisiana. He is affectionately called “Bocephus” (after Opry comedian Rod

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Brasfield’s puppet) by his father.

June 11: During Ernest Tubb’s segment, Hank Williams makes his Grand Ole Opry

debut, singing “Lovesick Blues” to such thunderous applause that he is quickly

asked to become a member.

June 25: Billboard adopts the name “Country & Western” for its country chart,

previously called “Hillbilly Music” and “Folk Records.”

Fall: The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, with Chet Atkins, move to

Springfield, Missouri and become the featured attraction on station KWTO’s

syndicated programs, sponsored by Red Star Flour.

September 3: With their baby son and Audrey’s daughter Lycrecia, and their

divorce recently reversed, Hank and Audrey Williams purchase a new home at

2510 Franklin Road in Nashville.

November 13: Grand Ole Opry headliners, including Little Jimmy Dickens, Minnie

Pearl, Red Foley, Roy Acuff, and new member Hank Williams, fly to Germany to

begin a two-week tour of American military bases in Europe.

1950

Future rockabilly artist Wanda Jackson stars on her own radio show, at age 13.

January 13: Red Foley’s “Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy” hits Billboard’s country

and pop charts, eventually topping both.

March 15: Flatt and Scruggs release their classic bluegrass song, “Foggy

Mountain Breakdown.”

March 28: Hank Snow records his self-penned, “I’m Moving On.” In May, it hits

the charts where it occupies the No. 1 spot for twenty-one weeks, equaling a

record set by Eddy Arnold. He soon joins the Grand Ole Opry.

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July 7: Johnny Cash enlists in the Air Force and, during training in San Antonio,

meets Vivian Liberto. Cash writes daily letters to Liberto while stationed in

Germany.

July 25: Lefty Frizzell records “I Love You a Thousand Ways” and “If You’ve Got

the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” at Jim Beck’s Studio in Dallas, Texas. Released

as the A and B sides of the same record, both become country classics, and “If

You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” is Frizzell’s first No. 1.

August 7: Rodney Crowell is born in Crosby, Texas.

September: The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle, with Chet Atkins “and His

Fancy Guitar,” debut on the Grand Ole Opry. Audience response is huge and they

are hired to play four shows a week.

September 30: The Grand Ole Opry is televised for the first time.

November 10: Patti Page’s cover of country song “The Tennessee Waltz,”

recorded by Page just days prior and written by Pee Wee King and Redd Stewart

in 1946, enters the Billboard Pop Music chart to begin a 30-week run, peaking at

No. 1 on December 30. Within six months, 4.8 million copies of the record have

been sold, making it the biggest selling song in 20 years.

In 1950, Hank Williams earns $92,000 in personal appearances and another

$40,000 in recording and songwriting royalties; he and Audrey spend the money

as fast as he makes it.

1951

March 16: Ray Benson is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

May 15: Buck Owens relocates from Phoenix, Arizona, to Bakersfield, California,

with his wife, Bonnie Owens, and their two sons. He joins the seminal Bakersfield

Sound band, the Orange Blossom Playboys, and performs frequently at the Black

Board, a Bakersfield dance hall.

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May 16: Hank Williams records “Hey Good Lookin’” – a hit he’d originally written

for Little Jimmy Dickens while the two were on tour.

July 15: The day after “Hey Good Lookin’” hits No. 1 on Billboard’s country charts,

Hank Williams returns to Montgomery for a celebratory homecoming show

featuring Hank Snow and The Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle with Chet

Atkins. Williams allows a young boy to sing “Hey Good Lookin’;” the same boy

will later marry his stepdaughter, Lycrecia.

November 3: Tony Bennett’s cover of “Cold, Cold Heart” hits the top of

Billboard’s pop charts, one of many Hank Williams songs that will appeal to pop

singers for decades to come.

December 10: Johnny Rodriguez is born in Sabinal, Texas.

December 30: Audrey Williams moves out of the home that she and Hank have

shared, bringing the children with her. Ten days later, she files for divorce.

In 1951, Lefty Frizzell has four songs in Billboard’s country Top 10, outselling

Hank Williams.

Late 1951/Early 1952: Owen and Harold Bradley open their first recording

studio on the third floor of the old Teamster’s building in downtown Nashville.

1952

By 1952, 1,200 radio stations in every corner of the nation are devoting at least

two hours to country and western music each day. Decca Records reports that

country represents 50% of its sales; Columbia’s country catalog has doubled in

size and represents 40% of its sales.

Charley Pride learns to play guitar, the same year he begins pitching in the Negro

American League.

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Despite his failing health and increasing drug and alcohol dependence, Hank

Williams copyrights 89 new songs in the first half of 1952.

March 1: Uncle Dave Macon – The Dixie Dewdrop – makes his last appearance

on the Grand Ole Opry.

May 3: Kitty Wells records “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” at

Castle Studios, Nashville, an “answer song” to Hank Thompson’s “The Wild Side

of Life.” It is the first song by a woman to reach No. 1 on the Billboard country

chart, disproving a long-held belief the women singers could not sell records.

May 18: George Strait is born in Poteet, Texas.

July 9: June Carter and Grand Ole Opry star Carl Smith are wed.

August 9: In constant pain from back problems and resorting to pills and alcohol

to combat it, Hank Williams misses a Grand Ole Opry performance, despite

having been warned not to do so. Two days later, manager Jim Denny fires him

from the show.

September: On the strength of two No. 1 hits, Webb Pierce joins the Grand Ole

Opry, filling the vacancy left by Hank Williams. Over the next four years, every

single he releases will hit the country Top 10, including ten that reach No. 1.

September 24: Hank Williams returns to the Louisiana Hayride, signing a three-

year contract.

October 10: Columbia Records releases “I’ll Go On Alone,” Marty Robbins’s first

No. 1 hit.

October 19: Hank Williams weds Billie Jean Jones in a public ceremony in New

Orleans, charging admission for both the afternoon rehearsal and the evening

ceremony, each including a musical performance. 14,000 fans attend.

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December 30: Hank Williams leaves Montgomery by car for two shows in West

Virginia and Ohio. The next day, en route through Knoxville, he persuades a

doctor to give him two shots of morphine on top of the chloral hydrate and

bourbon he is self-administering.

1953

January 1: In the early hours, somewhere between Bristol, Tennessee, and Oak

Hill, Virginia, Hank Williams dies in the back seat of his car. He is 29 years old.

January 4: 20,000 mourners gather outside Montgomery, Alabama’s Municipal

Auditorium for Hank Williams’s funeral – the largest crowd in the city’s history

since Jefferson Davis’s 1861 inauguration as president of the Confederacy.

January 19: Marty Robbins becomes a member of the Grand Ole Opry, having

been discovered in Phoenix by Little Jimmy Dickens.

January 30: MGM releases a posthumous Hank Williams record with “Kaw-Liga”

on the A side and “You’re Cheatin’ Heart” on the B. Both songs hit the Billboard

country chart on February 21 and both go to No. 1.

May 26: On the 20th anniversary of Jimmie Rodgers’s death, more than 30,000

people gather in Meridian, Mississippi for the unveiling of a monument to

Rodgers and a concert by Roy Acuff, Bill and Charlie Monroe, Hank Snow, the

original Carter Family, and others.

July: Capitol Records releases “A Dear John Letter,” a duet by Jean Shepard and

Ferlin Husky. It is Shepard’s first major hit, topping the Billboard country chart

and reaching No. 4 pop. At age 19, she is the youngest female artist to have a

country No. 1.

December 5: Billboard devotes 48 pages to “country” music. On its “Honor Roll of

Artists” are Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Red Foley,

Carl Smith, Hank Snow, and Ernest Tubb.

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1954

1955

July 5 + 6: Elvis Presley records “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky,”

the A- and B-sides of his first single, with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill

Black at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee. It is a huge hit locally.

July 18: Ricky Skaggs is born in Cordell, Kentucky.

August 7: After his discharge from the Air Force, Johnny Cash marries Vivian

Liberto. The couple moves to Memphis. Cash works as a door-to-door salesman

and begins playing guitar in the evenings with mechanics Marshall Grant and

Luther Perkins, and learns songs from blues musician, Gus Cannon.

August 7: Patsy Cline wins Best Female Vocalist in the National Country Music

Championships, Warrenton, Virginia, singing “Faded Love.” She soon begins

making appearances on Connie B. Gay’s WARL country radio variety show, Town

& Country Time, in Arlington, VA.

October 2: Elvis Presley performs his high-energy rockabilly version of “Blue

Moon of Kentucky” on the Grand Ole Opry. Audiences are unimpressed and he

is not asked back. Two weeks later, Elvis signs with the Louisiana Hayride. The

audience in Shreveport loves him, calling him “the Hillbilly Cat.”

Late 1954: Sam Phillips arrives at his studio, Sun Records, to find Johnny Cash

sitting on the steps asking for an audition. Phillips records four songs and tells

Cash, “Write something that’s not gospel and I’ll cut it.”

WSM tells its employees they can no longer have outside jobs, ultimately

resulting in the closing of Castle recording studio. Paul Cohen plans to move

Decca’s recording to a studio in Dallas; Owen Bradley makes a deal with Cohen

to build a bigger, more modern studio in Nashville.

March 8: Reba McEntire is born in McAlester, Oklahoma, and raised on an eight-

thousand-acre cattle ranch.

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March 22: John Cash, with Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant, records his single,

“Hey Porter” at Sun Records, backed by another Cash composition, “Cry, Cry,

Cry.” Phillips will give Cash the name “Johnny” and call Perkins and Grant, “The

Tennessee Two.”

April: Owen and Harold Bradley open Bradley’s Film & Recording Studio at

804 16th Avenue South, the first studio on what would become Music Row,

having purchased the house around Christmas. They soon add a military surplus

Quonset hut to serve as a second studio.

May 13: At the end of a show in Jacksonville, part of the Hank Snow All Star

Jamboree tour, Elvis Presley announces, “Girls, I’ll see you backstage.” A riot

ensues as a good portion of the 14,000-strong audience pursues Elvis into his

dressing room.

May 24: Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash and Vivian Liberto Cash, is

born in Memphis, Tennessee.

May 25: Elvis Presley attends the third annual Jimmie Rodgers Memorial

Celebration in Meridian, Mississippi. Elvis’s show ends with multiple encores.

June 1: Patsy Cline, recently signed with 4 Star Records, has her first recording

session with Owen Bradley. Her talent is obvious, but is hampered by mediocre 4

Star material.

October 9: Johnny Cash begins a week-long tour with Elvis Presley and Capitol

Records artist Wanda Jackson. Presley advises Jackson to adopt a rockabilly

sound and look.

November 11: Elvis Presley begins his second one-year contract with the

Louisiana Hayride for which he receives $200 weekly – more than 10x the

previous year’s salary and the same amount Hank Williams was paid three years

prior.

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November 21: Elvis Presley’s contract with Sun Records is bought by RCA for an

unprecedented $40,000, with a $5,000 signing bonus for Elvis.

November 21: Jean Shepard moves to Nashville and joins the cast of the Grand

Ole Opry. She falls in love with fellow cast member, Hawkshaw Hawkins.

December 15: Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” is released by Sun Records,

timed to coincide with his debut on the Louisiana Hayride. It will become one of

his signature songs.

Elvis is named 1955’s most promising Country & Western artist by both Billboard

and Cashbox magazines and, in Country & Western Jamboree magazine, he tops a

readers’ poll for “New Star of the Year” with 250,000 votes.

1956

January 10: In Nashville, Elvis Presley records “Heartbreak Hotel,” his first

session for RCA. The single rises to the Top 5 of the pop, country, and R&B charts

simultaneously and sells over a million copies. By late 1956, he has been signed

for Hollywood movies and his singles represent 2/3 of RCA’s business – and he

has outgrown the country market.

February 23: 11-year-old Brenda Lee performs on ABC-TV’s Ozark Jubilee, billed

as “the little girl with the big voice.” She moves with her family to Nashville and

signs with Owen Bradley at Decca.

May 1: Sun Records releases Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” recorded the

month before in Memphis, Tennessee. The song is Cash’s first Billboard country

No. 1, crossing over to No. 17 on the U.S. pop charts. It remains on the charts for

more than 43 weeks and sells more than 2 million copies.

July 7: Johnny Cash makes his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry,

performing “Get Rhythm,” “So Doggone Lonesome,” and “I Walk the Line.”

Backstage he meets June Carter for the first time.

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July 28: “Crazy Arms,” Ray Price’s unabashedly country single, featuring fiddle

and steel guitar, hits No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart, in defiance of rock-and-

roll’s influence. It is the first example of Price’s “Texas shuffle.”

September 10: Bobby Bare records for the first time in his career, at Capitol

Recording Studios, Hollywood. His backing band includes Buck Owens, a

frequent guitarist on Capitol sessions.

September: Webb Pierce, one of many country artists desperate to remain

relevant to a growing youth market, releases “Teenage Boogie.”

October 23: Dwight Yoakam is born in Pikeville, Kentucky.

In 1956, the number of strictly country stations shrinks from 600 to fewer than

100 as stations switch to a pop/rock “Top 40” format. Live “barn dance” programs

begin disappearing.

Despite their traditional gospel-influenced sound, The Louvin Brothers – Charlie

and Ira – take their brother harmonies to the top of the charts, scoring four Top

10s in 1956. The Everly Brothers, Simon and Garfunkel, and other duos are

strongly influenced by them.

1957

Roger Miller moves to Nashville and takes a job as a bellhop at the Andrew

Jackson Hotel, hoping to make it as a songwriter.

January 21: Patsy Cline wins Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, broadcast nationally

on CBS television, singing “Walkin’ After Mignight.” She also performs Hank

Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart.”

February 7: Jim Reeves records “Four Walls” in Nashville’s RCA Studios,

produced by Chet Atkins, an early example of the softer “Nashville Sound” that

within a few years will dominate country music.

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March 1: The Everly Brothers, Don and Phil, record Boudleaux and Felice

Bryants’ “Bye Bye Love.” It will rise to No. 2 on the pop charts, followed by other

Bryant hits “Wake Up Little Susie,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” and others, selling

more than 30 million records worldwide in three years. The Bryants prove that

songwriters can make a living in Nashville.

March 4: Marty Robbins records his self-penned “A White Sport Coat and a Pink

Carnation” at Columbia Studios in New York City, tired of pop artists having

more success with his songs than he does. It peaks at No. 1 on the Billboard

country chart – and No. 2 on the pop chart.

April 12: Vince Gill is born in Norman, Oklahoma.

Late October: RCA Victor relocates to its new studio on 17th Avenue in

Nashville, around the block from Bradley Studios, to be run by producer Chet

Atkins.

November 25: Deejay Ralph Emery begins working the graveyard shift at

Nashville’s 50,000-watt radio station WSM. The show, Opry Star Spotlight, is

broadcast across the nation for 15 years and helps keep country music alive in

the face of rock and roll’s ascension.

1958

April 6: Merle Haggard turns 21 in San Quentin prison – not doing life without

parole, but sentenced a few months earlier for a minor burglary and a rap sheet

of escapes and petty crimes.

June 9: Columbia releases Ray Price’s single “City Lights,” written by Bill

Anderson, backed by “Invitation to the Blues,” a Roger Miller song. The record’s

success helps establish the two young songwriters in Nashville.

July 9: After a succession of pop and country hits with Sun Records, Johnny

Cash signs with Columbia Records, where he will remain for the next 30 years.

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In 1959, he releases “Hymns by Johnny Cash” in memory of his brother Jack,

making good on a promise to his mother.

September: The Country Music Association (CMA) is formed in Nashville when

a group of industry executives files a nonprofit charter outlining its central

purpose: the “fostering, publicizing, and promoting of country music.”

September 30: Hilda Stuart in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gives birth to a son and

names him “Marty” after her favorite country music star, Marty Robbins.

1959

January 1: Johnny Cash plays a free concert for inmates inside California’s

maximum-security prison at San Quentin. Merle Haggard is in the audience and

becomes determined to follow in Cash’s footsteps.

January: The CMA appoints Jo Walker office manager of the organization. She

soon becomes its executive director, a post she will hold until 1991.

February 2: Rock-and-roll sensation Buddy Holly performs in Clear Lake, Iowa

as part of the “Winter Dance Party” tour, backed on the bass by good friend,

Waylon Jennings. Early the next morning, a plane carrying Holly, Ritchie Valens,

and J.P. Richards – aka, the Big Bopper – goes down in a cornfield. All passengers

are killed. Jennings had given his seat on the plane to Richards and is so

devastated by the tragedy he gives up performing for a time.

February 9: George Jones’s first No. 1 hit, “White Lightning,” written by his friend

J.P. Richards – aka, the Big Bopper – is released, one week after Richards’s death.

Drunk at the recording session, Jones is said to have needed 80 takes to get the

track right.

March 3: Lefty Frizzell records “Long Black Veil,” written by Danny Dill and

Marijohn Wilkin. Released on April 20, it would peak at No. 6 on the Billboard

country charts, giving Frizzell his first hit in five years.

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May 4: At the first Grammy Awards ceremony, the Kingston Trio wins Best

Country and Western Performance for their song, “Tom Dooley,” signaling the

strength of the folk boom and a renewed interest in story songs.

May 4: Randy Travis is born in Marshville, North Carolina.

June 1: Johnny Horton’s story song, “The Battle of New Orleans,” reaches No. 1

on the Billboard pop and country charts.

June 15: “I Ain’t Never,”recorded by Webb Pierce, is released, climbing to No. 2

on the charts and garnering half a million dollars in royalties over the years. Mel

Tillis, who wrote it, had sold half of the writing credit to Pierce (for $150 and a

pair of boots) – a common practice at the time – and thus lost $250,000.

June 21: Kathy Mattea is born in South Charleston, West Virginia, and raised in

the small nearby community of Cross Lanes.

August 13: Under Owen Bradley’s direction, Brenda Lee moves away from

rockabilly and records “I’m Sorry,” another early example of the Nashville Sound.

It spends three weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 the following summer and

becomes one of Lee’s signature songs.

August 24: Sibling singing group The Browns’ plaintive story song, “The Three

Bells,” hits No. 1 on the Billboard country and pop charts, where it will stay for

four weeks, ultimately selling more than a million copies.

October 26: “El Paso,” written and recorded by Marty Robbins, is released as a

single, despite Columbia’s objections that, at 4:38, it is far too long for radio. The

song reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s country and pop charts in early 1960 and wins a

GRAMMY for Best Country and Western Performance in 1961.

Late 1959/Early 1960: Loretta Lynn competes in and wins a talent competition

on The Bar-K Jamboree, a live television show hosted by Buck Owens on KTNT in

Tacoma, Washington.

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1960

By 1960, Nashville is home to more than a hundred music publishers and over a

thousand members of the musicians’ union.

Fred Foster moves his companies Monument Records and Combine Music

Publishing, formed two years earlier, to Nashville and signs Roy Orbison,

generating his first major hit, “Only the Lonely.” For the next four years, Foster

will produce the majority of songs with which Orbison is associated, including

“Crying” and “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

January 9: Patsy Cline joins the cast of the Grand Ole Opry.

February: Willie Nelson’s song “Family Bible” is released, attributed to Paul

Buskirk to whom Nelson had sold the songwriting credit for $50 and his dinner

check. The song becomes a country radio hit; encouraged, Nelson moves to

Nashville where he is hired by Pamper Music for $50/week.

February: The Osborne Brothers give a bluegrass concert at Antioch College.

Several bluegrass bands follow suit at campuses nationwide, notably by

the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs. Though bluegrass has faded from

mainstream country, it rebounds through such college shows and festivals.

February 8: Jim Reeves’s “He’ll Have to Go” hits No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart

(where it stays for 14 consecutive weeks), No. 2 on the pop chart, and No. 13 on

the R&B chart – a message to Nashville that the Nashville Sound formula sells.

March 12: After a two-week tryout during spring training, the Los Angeles

Angels (then owned by Gene Autry) pass on hopeful baseball player Charley

Pride. After he is also rejected by the New York Mets, Pride travels to Nashville

to try music.

May 2: WLS-Chicago, formerly home to the nation’s premier country music radio

barn dance, switches to a full-time rock-and-roll/Top 40 format.

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Summer: Bill Monroe calls six-year-old mandolin prodigy Ricky Skaggs up to

perform on stage during a Martha, Kentucky bluegrass concert. Using Monroe’s

mandolin, Little Ricky plays “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man.”

July 25: Loretta Lynn’s first national single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” climbs to No.

14 on the Billboard country charts. She and her husband, Doolittle, out on the

road promoting the song, head for Nashville.

September 30: Patsy Cline’s contract with 4 Star Records expires and she signs

with Decca. At her first Decca session with Owen Bradley six weeks later,

she records “I Fall to Pieces,” backed by the Jordanaires and written by Hank

Cochran and Harlan Howard. It is Cline’s first No. 1 country hit, crossing over to

No. 12 pop.

November 3: Merle Haggard is paroled from San Quentin and returns to

Bakersfield. He takes a day job digging ditches and performs in local honky tonks

seven nights a week.

November 7: A.P. Carter dies. He is buried in a small hillside cemetery behind the

Mount Vernon Methodist Church in Poor Valley, Virginia.

November 26: Jean Shepard and Hawkshaw Hawkins are wed onstage in front

of approximately 4,000 fans as part of a Grand Ole Opry package show in Wichita,

Kansas.

September 14: The Porter Wagoner Show, one of many popular syndicated

country music half-hour television variety shows, debuts on 18 stations. The

series will feature nearly every country music performer in the business over the

two decades it is in production.

Hattie Louse “Tootsie” Bess purchases the bar “Mom’s” on lower Broadway,

its backdoor opening onto the alley near the artist’s entrance to the Ryman

Auditorium. For nearly 15 years, it serves as a gathering place for performers to

42


share a beer and writers to pitch their new songs.

11-year-old Hank Williams Jr. performs his father’s hit, “Lovesick Blues” on the

Grand Ole Opry.

1961

January 7: Faron Young records Willie Nelson’s song “Hello Walls” within days

of Nelson demoing it at Tootsie’s. Nelson had offered to sell Young the writing

credit for $500; Young refused, instead giving Nelson a loan of $500. It becomes

a massive hit, spending 23 weeks on the charts. Nelson’s first royalty check is for

$14,000.

June 14: Patsy Cline is hospitalized in critical condition after a car accident in

which she was catapulted through the windshield, suffering broken bones, a

dislocated hip, and deep gashes to her forehead.

July 4: The first gathering of bluegrass acts to use the term “bluegrass festival”

is held in Luray, Virginia. Organized by Bill Clifton, it features Bill Monroe, The

Stanley Brothers, The Country Gentlemen, and Jim & Jesse.

July 22: A few days after being released from the hospital, Patsy Cline appears

on the Grand Ole Opry in a wheelchair to assure fans she’ll return to performing

soon.

August 16-25: Patsy Cline records a number of songs for a new album, Patsy

Cline Showcase, including “Crazy,” a song written by Willie Nelson. Cline has

trouble with pain from her injured ribs and the phrasing of the song, and leaves

without a completed vocal track.

September 3: Loretta Lynn signs a contract with Decca Records, working with

producer Owen Bradley.

September 15: Patsy Cline returns to Bradley Studios to overdub the vocal track

for “Crazy” and nails it on the first take. One month later, she sings it on the

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Grand Ole Opry and receives three standing ovations.

November: The Country Music Hall of Fame, though still essentially an idea,

inducts its first class of honorees: Jimmie Rodgers, Fred Rose, and Hank

Williams. The following year, Roy Acuff will be the first living artist to be

inducted.

November 29-30: Bill Monroe, Marty Robbins, Minnie Pearl, Jim Reeves, Faron

Young, and Patsy Cline perform at Carnegie Hall to rave reviews from the New

York Times.

December: Johnny Cash’s manager books June Carter on a show with Johnny

at the Big D Jamboree in Dallas. June and Johnny have great on-stage charisma

from the start, her cornball humor a perfect counter to his serious “man in black”

persona.

1962

January 4: George Jones records “She Thinks I Still Care.” Released in September,

it spends 23 weeks on the Billboard country chart, six of them at No. 1, and is one

of seven singles Jones will chart in 1962. Jones later calls it his “career record:”

the song that established his identity with fans.

January 22: Patsy Cline writes to a friend about the 13-year-old steel guitar

prodigy, Barbara Mandrell, sharing a room with her on a tour that includes

Johnny Cash and George Jones: “Looks like a blonde doll. And, boy, what a

showman.”

February 5, 6, 7, & 15: Ray Charles, when given creative control of an album for

the first time, records Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music at Capitol

Studios in New York City. It features country, folk, and western standards

reworked in Charles’s R&B and pop style, challenging racial barriers and earning

immediate critical and commercial success. The album is certified gold within a

year.

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February: Patsy Cline receives a Decca royalty check for $22,000. She and

Charlie make a down payment on a new home and move in by May. She tells Ray

Walker of the Jordanaires, “Ain’t nobody takin’ my Frigidaire and my car now!”

February: After the departure of Rose Maddox, June Carter becomes a regular

on the Johnny Cash road show; her mother and sisters follow close behind,

perfoming as “The Carter Family.”

February 7: Garth Brooks is born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

April 26: Harlan Howard, the “king” of country songwriters, wins a record ten

citations from BMI at the annual awards banquet. At one point in 1962, he has

15 songs on the country charts at the same time.

June 22: Johnny Cash plays the Hollywood Bowl, where 18,000 fans come to

hear him, the Carter Family, Patsy Cline, Roger Miller, Marty Robbins, Don

Gibson, and Flatt and Scruggs perform.

September 25: Loretta Lynn joins the Grand Ole Opry.

October 24: Anita Carter records “Ring of Fire,” a song written by her sister June

with Merle Kilgore. Released in December, the single fails to become a hit.

November 23-December 28: Patsy Cline has a 35-day engagement at the Merri-

Mint Theater in Las Vegas, for which she is paid $35,000. On Christmas Day,

Patsy cries on stage, saying she should be home with her family.

1963

January 19: “Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme song for the television show

The Beverly Hillbillies, becomes a Billboard No. 1 country hit for Flatt & Scruggs,

unheard of at the time for a bluegrass band.

February 4-7: Patsy Cline and Owen Bradley record enough material for a new

album with songs ranging across all musical genres, including Bill Monroe’s “Blue

45


Moon of Kentucky,” Bob Wills’s “Faded Love,” and Don Gibson’s “Sweet Dreams.”

March 2: Hawkshaw Hawkins’s first chart entry since 1959, “Lonesome 7-7203”

is released on the King label. Before leaving town, he stops at the WSM studios

and urges deejay Ralph Emery to “play the hell out of it.”

March 3: Numerous country artists perform at a show in Kansas City’s Memorial

Building benefitting the family of recently killed deejay “Cactus” Jack Call. Stars

include Dottie West, George Jones, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and –

as a last minute addition – Patsy Cline.

March 5: Caught in bad weather, the four-seater plane carrying Cowboy Copas,

Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Patsy Cline, piloted by Cline’s manager Randy Hughes,

goes down near Camden, Tennessee. All four are killed.

March 8: Jack Anglin, half of the country duo Johnnie & Jack, is killed in an

automobile accident en route to Patsy Cline’s Nashville area memorial service.

March 9: The Grand Ole Opry pays tribute to Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy

Copas, Patsy Cline, Randy Hughes, and Jack Anglin during its Saturday night

program, with the entire membership gathered onstage and audience standing

for a silent prayer.

March 10: Patsy Cline’s funeral is held in Winchester, Virginia, drawing 25,000

onlookers.

April 17: Mother Maybelle Carter begins a month-long tour with folk revival

group The New Lost City Ramblers – Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tracy

Schwarz -- starting with four nights at the Ash Grove in Hollywood. The room is

full each night, with more than 200 people in attendance.

May 4: Hawkshaw Hawkins’s last single, “Lonesome 7-7203” peaks at No. 1 on

the Billboard Hot Country Singles charts.

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June 15: “Act Naturally” becomes the first of 21 No. 1 country singles for Buck

Owens, the artist most closely associated with the Bakersfield Sound: a hard-

edged honky tonk-influenced beat with a twanging Telecaster and driving steel

guitar, defiantly the opposite of the Nashville Sound.

July 27: Johnny Cash’s version of “Ring of Fire,” with the addition of Mexican

mariachi horns, peaks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country chart and will stay there for

seven weeks, becoming one of the biggest hits of Cash’s career. Columbia signs

him to a new $500,000 contract.

July 28: Maybelle Carter performs and teaches autoharp and guitar workshops

at the Newport Folk Festival.

August 4: Connie Smith wins a talent contest at the Frontier Ranch music park

outside Columbus, Ohio, judged by country star Bill Anderson, who encourages

her to come to Nashville.

1964

January 11: Broke and ready to give up on Nashville, Roger Miller records 16 of

his sillier songs in three sessions over two days to make some quick cash: $100/

song, offered by his producer, Jerry Kennedy, as a favor to help him get settled in

Los Angeles.

February 8: MGM Records releases Hank Williams Jr.’s “Long Gone Lonesome

Blues,” a remake of his father’s hit. His mother Audrey arranges appearances on

the Ed Sullivan Show and a tour opening on New Year’s Day in Canton, Ohio, to

promote the record.

May 16: Buck Owens, Ernest Tubb, and Bill Monroe draw fans to all-country

concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York. Also featured are Webb

Pierce, Bill Anderson, Skeeter Davis, Hank Snow, Ray Price, and Porter Wagoner.

May 30: Wynonna Judd is born in Ashland, Kentucky.

47


June 1: Dolly Parton arrives in Nashville by bus, the day after graduating from

high school. She has been performing since before the age of ten and dreams of

making it big in Music City.

June 6: Roger Miller’s single, “Dang Me” – sent to radio promoters by Jerry

Kennedy after his kids expressed their enthusiasm for it -- hits the Billboard

country charts at No. 41 and goes straight to the top, staying there for six weeks

and crossing over to No. 7 on the pop charts.

June 24: Connie Smith signs with RCA. Three weeks later, she records Bill

Anderson’s “Once a Day.” At the end of November, it is the No. 1 country song in

the nation – the first debut single by a female country artist to reach the top.

July 23-26: Having exchanged letters previously, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan

meet for the first time in person at the Newport Folk Festival.

July 31: Jim Reeves dies in a plane crash, ending his career just as it was

beginning to peak.

August 22: When radio stations refuse to play his recording of “The Ballad of Ira

Hayes,” which discusses frankly the plight of Native Americans on reservations,

Johnny Cash takes out an ad in Billboard magazine asking: “Where are your

guts?”

September 19: Trisha Yearwood is born in Monticello, Georgia.

November 2: Merle Haggard’s single “(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers,”

written by Liz Anderson, is released. It becomes Haggard’s first national hit,

rising to No. 10 on the Billboard country chart. Haggard subsequently names his

band The Strangers.

November 3: After his surprise success, Roger Miller returns to Nashville to

record a follow-up album, producing his biggest hit, “King of the Road,” which

rises to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.

48


1965

November 12: Willie Nelson has his first recording session at RCA Studio B in

Nashville, with Chet Atkins producing. Despite best efforts, none of the LPs he

records with RCA in the next ten years are big successes on the country charts.

November 16: Bobby Bare hears an unknown Waylon Jennings perform at J.D.’s

nightclub in Scottsdale, Arizona and is so impressed he calls Chet Atkins at RCA

to urge for a recording contract.

November 28: At Willie Nelson’s debut performance on the Grand Ole Opry, the

announcer introduces him as “Woody.” He quits the show within a year.

On the strength of its Nashville Sound success with Eddy Arnold and others,

RCA builds its “Studio A,” a gym-sized room designed to hold and record large

ensembles essential to the smooth sound, including choirs, orchestras, and string

sections.

February 20: Buck Owens’s “I’ve Got a Tiger By the Tail” hits No. 1 on the

Billboard country chart, where it will remain for five weeks.

March 3: Buck Owens publishes a pledge to stay true to country music in

Nashville’s Music City News, beginning “I Shall Sing No Song That Is Not a

Country Song.”

April 13: Roger Miller wins five awards at the 1964 GRAMMY ceremony.

June: Kris Kristofferson spends a two-week leave from the Army before

accepting a commission to teach at West Point, in Nashville, harboring a

childhood dream of being a songwriter. After meeting Johnny Cash backstage at

the Grand Ole Opry, he decides to stay.

June 7: The CMA takes its sales presentation, “The Selling Sound of Country

Music,” emceed by Tex Ritter, to the Sales-Marketing Executives Club of Chicago.

49


The show is part of a nationwide effort by the CMA to increase country music’s

influence and presence in American culture. “The ‘C’ in country music means

cash,” reads a CMA brochure.

June 22: In RCA’s new Studio A, Eddy Arnold – now appearing in a tuxedo during

his concerts – records Hank Cochran’s “Make the World Go Away.” The song

soars to No. 1 on both the country and adult contemporary charts and No. 6 on

the pop chart, and is one of many Nashville Sound hits Arnold delivers for RCA.

July 10: A near-fatal car crash convinces 61-year-old Roy Acuff to quit touring;

he continues to be the center of activity – both onstage and backstage – at the

Ryman Auditorium during the Grand Ole Opry, where fans drive an average of

more than 600 miles for each performance.

August 4: Nashville-based session musician Charlie McCoy records “Desolation

Row” with Bob Dylan in Columbia Studio A, New York, adding acoustic guitar fills

that lend depth and complexity to the song.

August 16: With help from Cowboy Jack Clement, Charley Pride has his first

recording session in Nashville, at RCA Studio B. He records “Snakes Crawl at

Night” and “Atlantic Coastal Line,” both by Mel Tillis, as well as Clement’s “Just

Between You and Me.”

October 4: Johnny Cash is arrested for possession of more than a thousand pills,

including amphetamines and tranquilizers, in El Paso, Texas. He spends the night

in jail.

November 11: With little commercial success in Nashville, Loretta Lynn takes

Owen Bradley’s advice and records her self-penned “You Ain’t Woman Enough

(To Take My Man).” Released the following May, it reaches No. 1 nearly a year

after the recording. Other forthright No. 1s, like “Don’t Come Home a’Drinkin

(With Lovin’ On Your Mind),” follow.

November: Charley Pride signs with RCA, where he is championed by Chet

50


Atkins and produced by Cowboy Jack Clement.

December 28: Johnny Cash pleads guilty to drug possession in El Paso, Texas,

and is given a 30-day suspended sentence and a $1,000 fine. A photograph

taken as he and Vivian leave the courthouse leads to a call from the Ku Klux Klan

to boycott Cash’s records and concerts, calling Vivian his “negro wife” and his

children “mongrelized.”

December 28: RCA releases “Country” Charley Pride’s first single, “Snakes Crawl

at Night.” The debut record is released without a publicity photo or any mention

of Pride’s race.

Johnny Cash is banned from the Grand Ole Opry for smashing the footlights on

stage with his microphone stand.

Dolly Parton signs with Monument Records and Combine Music Publishing,

whose owner, Fred Foster, is known for his attraction to unconventional country

singer-songwriters.

Buck Owens spends 302 days on the road in 1965 and earns more than

$500,000 in royalties, the third highest for all Capitol Records artists, surpassed

only by the Beatles and the Beach Boys.

1966

January 7: Charley Pride becomes the first African American solo singing artist

to perform on the Grand Ole Opry.

February 14: Bob Dylan begins recording his double album Blonde on Blonde

in Nashville, after New York sessions proved fruitless. Top Music City session

musicians – Charlie McCoy, Hargus “Pig” Robbins, and others – help make the

recording a critical and commercial success. Soon more and more folk-rock

artists choose to record in Nashville.

February 28: The inaugural Academy of Country & Western Music awards

51


is held at the Palladium in Hollywood. Buck Owens wins Top Male Vocalist,

Roger Miller is Top Songwriter, and Merle Haggard takes Most Promising Male

Vocalist.

March: Ground is broken at the entrance to Music Row for the first Country

Music Hall of Fame: a barn shaped building with a glass façade. Doors open on

April 1, 1967.

March 12: Jeannie Seely records “Don’t Touch Me,” a No. 2 record that earns her

a GRAMMY and propels her to membership in the Grand Ole Opry, where she

becomes known for knocking down boundaries – for herself and all women.

March 15: Roger Miller wins six GRAMMY Awards.

March 25: Buck Owens records a live album at New York City’s Carnegie

Hall, kicking off the concert with his hit song, “Act Naturally.”

May 28: Hank Williams, Jr. releases one of his first self-written hits, “Standing in

the Shadows,” which summarizes his life so far. It reaches No. 5 on the Billboard

country chart. When he later tours in support of his own music, fans react poorly,

booing and leaving the audience.

June 30: Vivian Cash files for divorce from Johnny Cash. Unsure of where he is

living, she publishes the court order in the Nashville Banner four times in August,

unable to serve the papers in person.

Early September: Working with Epic producer Billy Sherrill, Tammy Wynette

records her first single, “Apartment #9.”

September 23: Dolly Parton records her first charting single, “Dumb Blonde,”

which reaches No. 24 on the country charts. Though other singers are having

success with Parton’s compositions, this song is by Curly Putman.

September: “Just Between You and Me,” Charley Pride’s first song to break the

52


Top 10 of Billboard’s country chart, is released. His next 13 singles are all Top 10s,

including six consecutive No. 1s.

December 1: Carter Stanley, elder of the Stanley Brothers, dies in Bristol,

Tennessee. Bill Monroe sings “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” at the funeral.

1967

February 27: Ray Price releases “Danny Boy,” his first Nashville Sound single.

Many country deejays feel so betrayed by Price’s abandonment of his honky tonk

roots that they literally break the record on-air. The song is Price’s first hit in

years, reaching No. 9 on the country chart.

March 4: Merle Haggard’s “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive,” written by Liz Anderson,

hits No. 1 on the country chart and starts a string of No. 1 hits for Haggard every

four months for the next three years.

July 10: “Ode to Billie Joe,” written and recorded by Bobbie Gentry, is released

by Capitol Records. Within three weeks, it is the No. 1 song on Billboard’s Hot

100, displacing The Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love.” Gentry’s album of the same

name also tops the charts, supplanting The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper after its 15-week

run at No. 1.

July 28: Epic Records releases “I Don’t Wanna Play House.” It is Tammy

Wynette’s first solo country No. 1, kicking off nearly ten years of No. 1 hits for

Wynette, including her signature song, “Stand by Your Man.”

August 13: Warren Beatty’s hit movie, Bonnie and Clyde, featuring Flatt and

Scuggs’ recording of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” is released in U.S. cinemas.

The exposure makes the song the best-known bluegrass tune in the nation.

September 5: Dolly Parton makes her first appearance on Porter Wagoner’s

nationally syndicated television show; she becomes the show’s regular “girl

singer” on October 16.

53


September 18: Merle Haggard records his song “Sing Me Back Home.” It and

other self-penned classics – “Hungry Eyes,” “Mama Tried,” “Workin’ Man Blues” –

earn him the nickname “Poet of the Common Man.”

October 9-11: Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton record together for the first

time in RCA Studio B. Their partnership will result in 13 studio albums, most of

which chart in the Top 10 of the Billboard Country LP chart.

October 16: Jan Howard and Bill Anderson’s duet, “For Loving You,” is released

on Decca. Within four weeks it has climbed to No. 1, spending a total of 20 weeks

on the Billboard country singles chart.

October 20: The first Country Music Association (CMA) awards ceremony is

held in Nashville.

November 2: Johnny Cash is arrested and jailed overnight in Georgia for

possession of amphetamines. The sheriff asks Cash why he is wasting his life.

Within days, and with help from his faith and from June Carter, he begins taking

steps to clean up.

1968

January 13: Johnny Cash records a live album at Folsom Prison in California

over two concerts. The resulting LP, At Folsom Prison, released by Columbia in the

spring, is a massive critical and commercial success.

February 22: After a performance of their duet, “Jackson,” Johnny Cash proposes

to June Carter on stage during a concert in London, Ontario. She says, “Yes.”

They marry on March 1, the day after they win a GRAMMY for “Jackson.”

March 9: The Byrds, including Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, and Gram Parsons,

record “Hickory Wind” and “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” at Nashville’s Columbia

Studios, with help from steel guitarist Lloyd Green. The album, Sweetheart of the

Rodeo, is considered one of country-rock’s seminal LPs; Parsons calls it “Cosmic

American Music.”

54


March 15: The Byrds play the Grand Ole Opry with steel guitarist Lloyd Green,

with a set list including Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home” and their own

“Hickory Wind.” Their reception is tepid, at best, with some booing and shouts at

the band to “get a haircut.”

July 20: The live version of Johnny Cash’s single, “Folsom Prison Blues,” begins a

four-week run at the top of the Billboard country singles chart.

July 26: Jeannie C. Riley records “Harper Valley, P.T.A.,” one of seven No. 1

country singles written by Tom T. Hall. The record sells over six million copies as

a single and Riley is the first woman to have a No. 1 hit on both the Billboard pop

and country charts simultaneously.

August 5: Columbia releases “Next in Line,” Conway Twitty’s first No. 1 country

single. He will have 39 more, including ten with duet partner Loretta Lynn.

August 20: After a fight with her husband Don Chapel, Tammy Wynette leaves

her Nashville home to begin a relationship with George Jones. Jones and

Wynette announce their marriage two days later, though it does not actually

take place for another six months.

October 4: Jan Howard records her song, “My Son,” dedicated to son Jimmy,

serving in Vietnam. The single is released on November 4. Five days earlier,

Jimmy had been killed in action.

December 21: Glen Campbell’s megahit, “Wichita Lineman,” peaks at No. 1 on

the Billboard country chart, a position it holds for two weeks. Written by Jimmy

Webb, the song also spends six weeks at the top of the adult contemporary chart

and reaches No. 3 on the pop chart.

1969

February 16: George Jones and Tammy Wynette are officially wed and begin

touring as “Mr. and Mrs. Country Music.”

55


February 18: Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan record “Girl from the North Country”

at Columbia Studios Nashville for Dylan’s LP Nashville Skyline.

February 24: At San Quentin prison, Johnny Cash makes a live recording of “A

Boy Named Sue,” written by Shel Silverstein, who’d demoed it just nights before

at a guitar pull in Cash’s home. It is Cash’s biggest single ever. The album, Johnny

Cash at San Quentin – his second live prison recording – is equally huge, spending

20 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard country chart.

February 29: The song “Gentle on My Mind,” written by John Hartford, receives

four GRAMMY awards – two for Hartford, in both the folk and country

categories, and two for singer Glenn Campbell – and is the theme song for

Campbell’s comedy variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, airing on

CBS from January 1969—June 1972.

May 16: Roger Miller records “Me and Bobby McGee,” the first songwriting

success for Kris Kristofferson. His publisher at Combine Music, Fred Foster

had suggested the title. The song will be recorded by numerous artists over the

years, most famously Janis Joplin, who records the song just before her death.

June 5: “Hee Haw” debuts on primetime television, hosted by Buck Owens and

Roy Clark and including Minnie Pearl and Grandpa Jones as regulars. The first

show’s guests are Loretta Lynn and Charley Pride. It airs on CBS for three years

and an additional 22 years in syndication.

June 7: The first of Johnny Cash’s weekly national network television shows,

taped live at the Ryman Auditorium, airs on ABC. Guests demonstrate the

eclectic nature of Cash’s musical tastes: Eddy Arnold, Stevie Wonder, Pete

Seeger, Odetta, Louis Armstrong, and others. It runs until March 1971.

August: Charley Pride’s recording of “All I Have To Offer you (Is Me)” hits No. 1

on the Billboard country chart, the first of his 29 No. 1 singles. Pride becomes the

first black artist to have a No. 1 country hit.

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August 30: Mel Tillis’s song “Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love to Town)” is recorded

by more than half a dozen artists, including Waylon Jennings and Tillis himself,

before Kenny Rogers and The First Edition score a global hit with it in 1969.

October 1: Loretta Lynn records her classic, “Coal Miner’s Daughter” at Bradley’s

Barn studio. Released a year later, it reaches No. 1 on the charts and becomes

Lynn’s signature song.

October 26: Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter marry in Mesa, Arizona.

November 15: Earl Scruggs, having recently split from Lester Flatt, travels with

his sons to Washington, D.C. to take part in the march calling for a moratorium

on the Vietnam War.

November 15: Merle Haggard’s blue-collar anthem, “Okie from Muskogee,” hits

No. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart, where it remains for four weeks. It

becomes Haggard’s biggest hit and a rallying cry of the so-called Silent Majority

that supports the war in Vietnam.

By the end of the decade, more than 600 stations are programming country

music full time.

1970

March 3: John Carter Cash is born to country music superstars June Carter and

Johnny Cash in Nashville, Tennessee.

April 17: Johnny Cash performs at the Nixon White House but declines the

president’s request to sing Guy Drake’s “Welfare Cadillac,” a song disparaging

of poor people receiving public assistance. Instead, he sings “What Is Truth,” a

defense of young people who challenge the status quo and speak out against

injustice.

May 4: With Porter Wagoner producing, Dolly Parton records the old Jimmie

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1971

Rodgers tune, “Mule Skinner Blues,” her first Top 10 single.

July 24: Eleven-year-old Marty Stuart meets Connie Smith, performing at the

Choctaw Indian Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi. He takes her picture and has his

picture taken with her – and tells his mother he will marry her some day.

October: Bill Monroe and The Original Carter Family (Sara, Maybelle, and A.P.

are inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

October 10: Johnny Cash’s recording of Kris Kristofferson’s masterpiece

“Sunday Morning Coming Down” hits the top of the Billboard country singles

chart. Four days later it earns Kristofferson the Song of the Year award at the

4th annual CMA ceremony; retrieving the award on stage, he stuns the audience

with his shoulder-length hair and bell-bottom jeans.

December 23: Willie Nelson’s farmhouse in Ridgetop, Tennessee, catches fire

while he’s at a Christmas party in Nashville. He rushes into the house upon his

arrival, saving his guitar (“Trigger” and two pounds of marijuana.

Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley join Ralph Stanley’s band, the Clinch Mountain

Boys, after Stanley is impressed by their renditions of old Stanley Brothers

material at a show in Kentucky.

Bobby Bare and Tom T. Hall hear Johnny Rodriguez sing at Alamo Village, a

tourist attraction north of Brackettville, Texas. Impressed, Hall arranges for

Rodriguez to come to Nashville, join his band, and audition with a record label.

Early 1971: Johnny and June Cash travel to Vietnam and perform for troops and

hospitals. Upon his return, Cash pens “Man in Black” in which he writes “I wear

the black in mourning for the lives that could have been / Each week we lose a

hundred fine young men.” His next hit, “Singin’ in Vietnam Talkin’ Blues,” refers to

the war as “the livin’ hell.”

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Early 1971: Chris Hillman of the Byrds sees Emmylou Harris perform at Clyde’s

Restaurant outside Washington, D.C., and recommends her as a duet partner

to Gram Parsons. A year later, Parsons sends Harris a plane ticket to L.A. for

rehearsals.

February 6: Dolly Parton’s self-penned single, “Joshua,” reaches the top of the

Billboard country chart. It is her first of many self-written hits, including “Coat of

Many Colors” and another No. 1, “Jolene.”

August: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band hosts six days of recording at Woodland

Studios in East Nashville for their three-disc set, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Participants include classic country and bluegrass stars Merle Travis, Jimmy

Martin, Vassar Clements, Roy Acuff, Pete “Oswald” Kirby, Jimmy Martin, Earl

Scruggs, and Mother Maybelle Carter.

October 10: “Help Me Make It Through the Night” captures Single of the Year

at the CMA Awards, a win for Sammi Smith who, as the first woman to sing the

Kris Kristofferson-penned hit, turns it into a song that is groundbreaking for

country radio at the time; the song also wins GRAMMY Awards for Smith and

Kristofferson.

October 10: Charley Pride wins the CMA awards for Entertainer of the Year and

Male Vocalist of the Year.

November: Guy Clark moves to Nashville with his wife Susanna. His home

becomes the center of a songwriting scene that will include Rodney Crowell,

Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, Steve Earle, and Townes Van Zandt.

The Exit/In, a live music venue, opens in Nashville on Elliston Place, near

Centennial Park and Vanderbilt University.

1972

March 17: An outdoor music festival in Dripping Springs, Texas – featuring

Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens, Roy Acuff, Kris

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Kristofferson, Tex Ritter, and Tom T. Hall – draws traditional country fans and

hippies and inspires Nelson to start his own festival in the same location.

March 27: 13-year-old Tanya Tucker bursts onto the country music scene with

“Delta Dawn,” which peaks at No. 3 in August. With help from producer Billy

Sherrill, she will score six No. 1s before her 18th birthday.

April: The CMA hosts the first annual “Fan Fair” – a weekend of live music and

artist meet-and-greets, attended by 5,000 fans and more than 100 artists,

including Bill Anderson, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Dolly

Parton. In 2004, the event is officially renamed “The CMA Music Festival.”

July 8: Kris Kristofferson records his song, “Why Me,” borne from Kristofferson’s

profound experience during a Rev. Jimmie Rodgers Snow service at Evangel

Temple in Nashville. It is Kristofferson’s biggest hit as a solo artist, reaching No. 1

on the Billboard country chart and No. 16 pop.

August 12: Willie Nelson performs for the first time at the Armadillo World

Headquarters in Austin, Texas, having left Nashville for good.

August 24: Townes Van Zandt records the original version of his song “Pancho

and Lefty” at Jack Clement’s recording studio in Nashville.

September 11: Johnny Rodriguez cuts “Pass Me By (If You’re Only Passing

Through)” at his first recording session. In January, it peaks at No. 6 and becomes

the first of Rodriguez’s 15 straight Top 10 hits in four years.

October 16: At the CMA Awards, Loretta Lynn becomes the first woman to win

Entertainer of the Year and Charley Pride becomes the first man to win Male

Vocalist of the Year two years in a row.

October 21: 14-year-old prodigy Marty Stuart makes his debut on the Grand Ole

Opry, playing as the newest member of Lester Flatt’s band, the Nashville Grass.

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December 12: Loretta Lynn records “The Pill,” produced by Owen Bradley at

his recording studio, Bradley’s Barn. Decca holds back the release of the song,

fearing political fallout.

December: Ronnie Milsap moves to Nashville, inspired by Charley Pride, who’d

seen him performing at the Whiskey A Go-Go nightclub in Los Angeles and

encouraged him to turn his full attention to country.

1973

Hazel Smith, working as a publicist for Tompall Glaser, receives a call from a

deejay at WCSE in Ashboro, North Carolina, asking what to call the music being

played by Glaser, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. After a

moment’s hesitation, she says: “Outlaw.”

February: Western swing revival band Asleep at the Wheel, led by Ray Benson,

performs for the first time at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas.

April 28: “Behind Closed Doors” peaks at No. 1 – the first of many Billboard Hot

Country and Hot 100 chart toppers for former R&B singer Charlie Rich. Rich

had worked with Countrypolitan producer Billy Sherrill to reinvent himself as an

easy-listening country-pop star.

May 11: The Eagles, Lester Flatt and the Nashville Grass, and Gram Parsons

and Emmylou Harris perform together at a concert on the campus of Michigan

State University. Marty Stuart remembers thinking they all fit under one country

music umbrella.

May 23: Working with producer Billy Sherrill, Barbara Mandrell records her

breakthrough hit “The Midnight Oil” at Columbia Studios in Nashville.

May-June: Upon graduation from high school, Rosanne Cash becomes a member

of father Johnny Cash’s touring show, joining Maybelle Carter and the Carter

Sisters and Carl Perkins. Alarmed at his daughter’s lack of country music

background, Cash pens a list of “one hundred essential country songs” and tells

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her: “This is your education.”

July 4: The first annual Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic is held in Dripping

Springs, Texas. The lineup includes Waylon Jennings, Leon Russell, Kris

Kristofferson, Rita Coolidge, Tom T. Hall, and Charlie Rich, and draws a diverse

crowd of hippies and traditional country fans.

July: Johnny Cash releases “Praise the Lord and Pass the Soup,” backed by the

Carter Family and the Oak Ridge Boys. The latter replace The Statlers as part of

Cash’s road show.

August 1: Tammy Wynette files for legal separation from George Jones. After a

fragile reconciliation, she withdraws her petition.

September 15: RCA releases “Country Sunshine,” a song co-written and

recorded by Dottie West. It peaks at No. 2 on the Billboard country singles chart

and has great success as a television commercial jingle for Coca-Cola. Now a

classic television ad, it garners West a Clio award in 1974.

September 19: Gram Parsons dies from an alcohol and drug overdose outside

Joshua Tree National Park. Emmylou Harris calls his death “like falling off a

mountain.”

October: Waylon Jennings breaks the RCA rule requiring all RCA albums to be

recorded by RCA engineers in RCA studios when he cuts the songs “Louisiana

Woman,” “Pick Up the Tempo,” “Walkin’,” and “This Time” at Glaser Studios –

a.k.a., “Hillbilly Central” – in Nashville. RCA initially refuses the masters, but

eventually relents.

October 15: Patsy Cline is the first female solo artist inducted into the Country

Music Hall of Fame.

October 27: Tammy Wynette and George Jones’s duet, “We’re Gonna Hold On”

peaks at No. 1 on Billboard’s country singles chart.

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1974

February 19: Dolly Parton announces she is splitting from Porter Wagoner’s

television show.

March 15: The Ryman Auditorium hosts the Grand Ole Opy for the last time,

followed by the Grand Ole Gospel Time with Rev. Jimmie Rodgers Snow. The final

song performed that evening, with Johnny Cash, the Carter Family, and other

Opry stars joining in, is “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

March 16: With President Richard Nixon as guest of honor, the Grand Ole Opry

debuts in its new home, the Grand Ole Opry House, constructed six miles from

downtown Nashville and flanked by a theme park (Opryland USA) and a 615-

room hotel and convention center.

May 5: Merle Haggard is featured on the cover of Time magazine.

June 6: RCA releases “I Will Always Love You,” Dolly Parton’s anthem to Porter

Wagoner and her biggest commercial hit of all time. She takes it to No. 1 twice –

in 1974 and again in 1982 – and a cover version by Whitney Houston in 1992 is

the best-selling single by a woman in music history.

July: Waylon Jennings releases This Time, his first album recorded at Glaser

Studios and under his new RCA contract which allows him to choose his own

songs and use his own band. Waylon’s company is WGJ Productions – the initials

standing for “Waylon Goddamn Jennings.”

October 10: Australian pop-sounding singer Olivia Newton John is named CMA

Female Vocalist of the Year, beating out Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn. Country

traditionalists are not pleased.

December 10: Reba McEntire sings the national anthem at the National

Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City. Country singer and songwriter Red Steagall is

impressed and arranges for McEntire and her mother to travel to Nashville to

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make some demos.

1975

January 6: Tammy Wynette files for divorce from George Jones.

January 27: MCA releases Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill.” Some radio stations refuse to

play it, until demand makes it a Top 5 country hit.

February: After signing with Columbia Records and gaining creative control

over his records, Willie Nelson brings his own band into Autumn Sound Studios

outside Dallas and records The Red Headed Stranger, a minimalist concept album.

Label executives are certain, as Billy Sherrill says, “it will die a quick death.”

February 7: Reprise releases Emmylou Harris’s LP Pieces of the Sky, with songs

inspired by the lessons in country music she’s learned from Gram Parsons. Her

version of an old Louvin Brothers’ song, “If I Could Only Win Your Love,” reaches

No. 4 on the Billboard country chart.

February—July: Hank Williams Jr. records his breakthrough album, Hank

Williams Jr. & Friends in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It represents a new direction for

Williams, blending country, blues, and Southern rock.

March 22: The pilot for PBS’s Austin City Limits is broadcast, featuring Willie

Nelson. The show’s inaugural first season episode airs the following January and

the show becomes the longest-running music program in television history.

May 13: Bob Wills dies in Fort Worth, Texas, in the midst of making his last

recording.

May 31: Freddy Fender tops the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “Before the Next

Teardrop Falls,” having hit No. 1 on the country chart two months prior.

June 11: Acclaimed Hollywood director Robert Altman releases his feature film,

Nashville, a metaphor for modern American culture. Reaction in Music City is

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mostly negative.

August 8: Hank Williams Jr. comes close to death when he falls 500 feet down

the rocky slope of Ajax Mountain in Montana, breaking multiple bones, including

every bone in his face.

September 6: Waylon Jennings’s LP Dreaming My Dreams, produced by Jack

Clement and recorded at Hillbilly Central in Nashville, reaches No. 1 on the

Billboard Top Country Albums chart. The album is his first to be certified gold and

produces the musical critique of Nashville business-as-usual, “Are You Sure Hank

Done It This Way,” which hits No. 1 on the singles chart two months later.

October 4: Willie Nelson’s spare concept album The Red Headed Stranger is No.

1 on Billboard’s country LPs chart, where it will remain for five weeks, spending

a total of 121 weeks on the chart. A single from the LP, “Blue Eyes Crying In the

Rain,” peaks at No. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart the same day.

October 13: Folk-pop singer John Denver wins the CMA’s top honor: Entertainer

of the Year. Charlie Rich sets the card announcing the win on fire and a group of

artists form the Association of Country Entertainers to “preserve the identity of

country music.”

October 22: Larry Gatlin records “Broken Lady,” backed by his brothers. The

single is Gatlin’s breakout solo hit, rising to No. 5 on the Billboard country chart

and earning him a GRAMMY for Best Country Song.

October 25 + 26: Emmylou Harris and backing band, The Hot Band, including

Rodney Crowell, perform for sixty thousand fans at Dodgers stadium in Los

Angeles, opening for British rocker Elton John.

December 24: Guy and Susanna Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Rodney Crowell,

Steve Earl, and others are captured on film playing music in the Clark’s kitchen

for James Szalapski’s documentary Heartworn Highways.

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1976

February: Dolly Parton becomes the first female country singer to have her own

syndicated television show with the broadcast debut of Dolly!.

February 28: RCA’s compilation album Wanted! The Outlaws, featuring Willie

Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser, peaks at No. 1 on the

Billboard country LPs chart. It crosses over to the Top 10 of the pop chart and

becomes the first certified platinum album in country music history.

March 4: 17-year-old Vince Gill and his bluegrass band Mountain Smoke open

for rock group KISS at the Civic Center Music Hall, Oklahoma City. They are

booed off the stage.

April 22: Producer Billy Sherrill reunites Tammy Wynette and George Jones for

one more duet album. Its title track, “Golden Ring,” written by Bobby Braddock

and Rafe Van Hoy, tops the Billboard country singles chart in August, and the

album reaches No. 1 in October.

July 1: The Nashville Banner reports that Dolly Parton has signed with a Beverly

Hills-based management firm that also represents Mac Davis and Olivia

Newton-John. The move draws protest in Nashville.

October 11: Outlaw country sweeps the CMA Awards, taking Vocal Group of the

Year, Vocal Duo of the Year, Album of the Year, and Single of the Year.

October 27: Crystal Gayle records megahit “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”

at Jack’s Tracks in Nashville. Her pop-like singing style and overdubbed strings

bring Gayle crossover success that sister, Loretta Lynn, never had.

December 6: The first Johnny Cash Christmas Special airs on CBS television. A

new special will be broadcast nearly every year through 1985.

1977

April 2: Kenny Rogers scores the first of 21 No. 1 country singles with “Lucille.”

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His hit “The Gambler” is so popular that four made-for-television movies are

based upon it.

August 25: Waylon Jennings’s $1500/day cocaine habit becomes public

knowledge when he is arrested at Hillbilly Central recording studio on charges of

possession and intent to distribute. Jennings narrowly escapes prosecution.

December 3: Dolly Parton’s first crossover success, “Here You Come Again,” hits

No. 1 on the country carts and No. 3 pop the following month. Previously her

singles sold about 60,000 copies; this one sells a million.

December 3-12: Against his label’s objections, Willie Nelson records an album of

American pop standards, Stardust, at a studio in southern California. The album

hits No. 1 on the Billboard’s country chart, is named Top Country Album for 1978,

and will stay on the charts for 551 weeks.

1978

January 25: United Artists releases Kenny Rogers and Dottie West’s first

collaboration, “Every Time Two Fools Collide.” It goes to No. 1 and is now

considered a classic country duet.

February 25: Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings’ album Waylon & Willie hits No.

1 on the Billboard country LPs chart, where it will remain for 11 weeks.

April 4: George Jones misses two shows in August County, Virginia – one of

many occurrences that have earned Jones the nickname “No Show” – and is sued

for $29,654. After he fails to appear in court, the judge finds against him.

July 13: Willie Nelson graces the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, hailed as “King

of the Honky Tonks.”

September 5: In a drug-crazed rage, George Jones fires a pistol at his friend,

songwriter Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery, in Florence, Alabama. After months of

arrests and psychotic episodes, Jones is treated for alcoholism at a hospital in

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Birmingham, from which he is transferred to Hillcrest, a psychiatric hospital.

October 4: Tammy Wynette is allegedly kidnapped from Nashville’s Green Hill

Mall parking lot. Her abductors are never identified.

October 5: Dolly Parton is the first country singer to grace the cover of Playboy

and gives the magazine’s editors a feature interview – but does not appear nude.

1979

April 7: Rosanne Cash and Rodney Crowell marry. Crowell’s band, the Cherry

Bombs, backs Cash on the road and in the studio, including guitarist and backup

vocalist Vince Gill.

April 13: Warner Brothers releases Emmylou Harris’s LP Blue Kentucky Girl,

featuring the bluegrass chops of band member Ricky Skaggs, who’d joined the

Hot Band in 1977. It is quickly successful, going Gold earlier than any other

Harris album.

August 25: The Charlie Daniels Band reaches No. 1 on Billboard’s country singles

chart and No. 3 on its pop chart with “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” The

song features uptempo bluegrass fiddle breaks – a rarity in hit singles.

October 8: Willie Nelson, who once couldn’t make it as a singer in Nashville, wins

the CMA award for Entertainer of the Year.

1980

January: Billy Sherrill brings George Jones and Tammy Wynette into the studio

for an album of duets, Together Again. It would peak at No. 26 on the Billboard

country LP chart the following November.

Spring: Marty Stuart joins Johnny Cash’s road band.

April 11: Country-rock group Alabama signs with Joe Galante and Jerry Bradley

at RCA.

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May 31: Songwriter Bob McDill has a No. 1 country hit with “Good Ole Boys Like

Me,” a song taken to the top by singer Don Williams and inspired by Robert Penn

Warren, referencing Southern writers Thomas Wolfe and Tennessee Williams.

June 6: Feature film Urban Cowboy is released at the box office. Set in Gilley’s

dance hall in Texas and starring John Travolta, the movie ignites a boom in

country music.

July 5: At age 50, George Jones scores his fiftieth Top 10 and seventh No. 1 hit

with “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” kicking off ten Top 10 hits for Jones in the

next four years. That October, he is named CMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year, an

award he will win the following year, as well.

August 16: Alabama’s debut RCA single, “Tennessee River,” goes straight to

No. 1 on the Billboard country singles charts, the first of an unprecendented 20

consecutive chart topping hits.

October 13: At age 48, Johnny Cash becomes the youngest living artist inducted

into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

November 8: Willie Nelson takes “On the Road Again,” the theme song for his

film Honeysuckle Rose, to the top of the country charts and into the Top 20 pop. It

becomes one of Nelson’s signature songs.

November 18: Television variety show Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters

debuts on NBC-TV. Inaugural guest Dolly Parton sings “9 to 5” and duets with

Mandrell on The Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love.”

December 19: The hit comedy 9 to 5 is released, with Dolly Parton starring

in a lead role opposite Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda. No. 1 on both the pop and

country charts, the film’s title song, written and performed by Parton, wins two

GRAMMYs and an Oscar nomination, and is Billboard’s most-performed country

hit of the year.

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1981

1982

March 11: Epic releases Ricky Skaggs’s electrified take on Lester Flatt & Earl

Scruggs’ “Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’.” It is Skaggs’s breakout hit, reaching No.

16 on the Billboard country singles chart.

March 12: MCA releases the Oak Ridge Boys’ biggest crossover success, “Elvira.”

It and 17 other No. 1 country singles expand the group’s fan base beyond

traditional gospel.

March 31: Sissy Spacek wins the Best Actress Academy Award for her portrayal

of Loretta Lynn in the biopic, Coal Miner’s Daughter, named for Lynn’s song and

autobiography.

May 23: Rosanne Cash’s hit single “Seven Year Ache” reaches No. 1 on the

Billboard country singles chart, the first of 11 No. 1s for Cash.

August 1: MTV: Music Television debuts on cable television, which at that time

had about 25 channels.

August 29: Ronnie Milsap scores his biggest country No. 1 hit with “(There’s

No Getting’ Over Me,” crossing over to No. 5 pop. With dozens of No. 1s, an

Entertainer of the Year award, and six GRAMMYs, Milsap is one of the top

Countrypolitan hit-makers from the mid-1970s through the early ‘90s.

September 4: MCA Records releases George Strait’s first solo album, Strait

Country. It is eventually certified Platinum – as will be nearly every LP released

by Strait for the remainder of the century.

January 1: Amy Kurland opens The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. It becomes a

significant songwriter showcase in the years ahead.

April 17: Johnny Cash guest hosts Saturday Night Live; musical guest is Elton

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John.

August 28: George Strait tops the Billboard country singles chart for the first

time with “Fool Hearted Memory.” He will have sixty additional No. 1s – more

than any other artist, in any musical genre.

November 9: Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson record Townes Van Zandt’s

“Pancho and Lefty” at Willie’s studio in Texas. Their LP of the same name shoots

to No. 1 on the country charts, crosses over to pop, and sells more than a million

records.

1983

In the decade leading up to 1983, the number of full-time country radio stations

triples, from 764 to 2,266.

1983: The Roy Clark Celebrity Theatre opens in Branson, Missouri, the first

performance venue to be linked to a celebrity entertainer. Many other such

theaters in Branson will follow and country music artists –Johnny Cash, Loretta

Lynn, Waylon Jennings, and others – encamp there for weeks each year.

March 7: The Nashville Network (TNN) debuts on cable television, two days

after rival channel Country Music Television (CMT).

June 21: Kathy Mattea signs with Mercury and teams with independent

producer Allen Reynolds. They produce hit singles for more than a decade,

including her biggest No. 1 success, “Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses.”

July 11: Merle Haggard’s LP Big City, recorded in 1981, becomes his first

certified Gold record.

October 1: Reba McEntire leaves Mercury Records for MCA, unhappy with

Mercury’s country-pop production values.

October 29: Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers score a No. 1 country and pop hit

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with their duet “Islands in the Stream,” produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees.

December 23: Hank Williams Jr.’s LP Family Tradition is certified gold, beginning

an uninterrupted string, through the 1980s and early 1990s, of 21 gold records.

He will win five Entertainer of the Year awards, two from the CMA and three

from the ACM.

1984

September 6: Ernest Tubb dies in Nashville, Tennessee, ending one of the

country music’s longest and most respected careers.

September 17: Dwight Yoakam opens for British rocker Nick Lowe at the Palace

in Los Angeles; the show helps launch him on a new level in the LA club scene,

where he is known for his honky tonk music, informed by driving post-punk

energy.

October 15: RCA Records/Curb Records releases mother and daughter duo The

Judds’ debut album, Why Not Me. It spends three weeks at No. 1 the following

February and the Judds become the dominant country music duo throughout the

1980s.

1985

January 19: “How Blue,” the first MCA single released by Reba McEntire, peaks

at No. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart. It places Reba firmly in the “new

traditionalist” category and is the first of 20 No. 1s she will have with MCA.

April 13: The Grand Ole Opry Live is first broadcast on cable channel TNN.

June 2: Roger Miller’s Broadway musical, Big River, based on Mark Twain’s

Huckleberry Finn, wins seven Tony Awards, including Best Original Score (music

and lyrics) for Miller.

July 4: At Willie Nelson’s annual Fourth of July Picnic in Texas, the country

supergroup, The Highwaymen – Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings,

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and Kris Kristofferson – perform together live for the first time.

August 20: Ricky Skaggs leads the nominations for the CMA Awards with six.

Among them is “Music Video of the Year” for Skaggs’s “Country Boy,” featuring

Bill Monroe as Skaggs’s “Uncle Pen” and a cameo by incumbent New York City

mayor, Ed Koch.

September 22: Willie Nelson joins forces with rockers Neil Young and John

Mellencamp to found Farm Aid: A Concert for America. The show, with a crowd

of 80,000 in Champaign, Illinois, features Bob Dylan, Loretta Lynn, Tom Petty,

Bonnie Raitt, and others, and raises over $7 million for America’s family farmers.

1986

February 25: Rosanne Cash wins Best Country Vocal Performance, Female, at

the GRAMMY Awards in Los Angeles for “I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want

Me,” a song written by Cash and Rodney Crowell after she had lost the award in

1983.

March 3: Reprise releases Dwight Yoakam’s album, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.,

having refused to use the word “hillbilly” on the cover. The album reaches No. 1

in three months and sells more than two million records. The title for Yoakam’s

next release, Hillbilly Deluxe, is approved with no problem.

April 15: Trisha Yearwood applies for a job at the Country Music Hall of Fame

and is hired to give tours. 15 years later, her application becomes part of an

exhibit there.

June 6: Warner Bros. Nashville releases Randy Travis’s debut album, Storms of

Life. Certified 3x Platinum, it contains four Top 10 singles, including two No. 1s.

Travis will employ his pure country baritone on five additional Platinum LPs

within the decade.

July 18: After 28 years, Columbia Records drops Johnny Cash, who has not had a

No. 1 solo hit in a decade. Cash first learns of it by reading the newspaper. Many

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country music artists and fans are outraged.

July 19: “Folkabilly” singer-songwriter Nanci Griffith’s song “Love at the Five and

Dime” is taken to No. 3 on the Billboard country singles chart by Kathy Mattea.

November 8: Fusing country and rock, Steve Earle’s LP Guitar Town tops the

Billboard country albums chart.

1987

January 31: Texan Lyle Lovett, known for his quirky blend of country with folk,

jazz, blues, and gospel, has a No. 10 country hit with his song “Cowboy Man.”

March 2: Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Ronstadt release the

collaborative album, Trio, on Warner Bros. Records. It sells over four million

copies worldwide and wins two GRAMMYs.

June 6: Garth Brooks auditions for owner Amy Kurland at The Bluebird Cafe,

to perform at a later date. Garth receives a 4++ for his song and a 4++++ for his

performance. “Nobody ever got a 5,” Kurland later says.

June 29: Columbia Records releases Rosanne Cash’s LP King’s Record Shop. It

produces four consecutive No. 1 hits, including “Tennessee Flat Top Box,” a song

her father first recorded in 1961.

August 15: Rounder Records releases fiddle phenom Alison Krauss’s debut

album, Too Late to Cry. She is 16 years old.

October 12: Reba McEntire becomes Country Music Association’s “Female

Vocalist of the Year” for the fourth year in a row, the first woman ever to do so.

1988

March 30: Rodney Crowell releases his critically and commercially successful

LP, Diamonds and Dirt. All five of its singles reach the top of the Billboard country

chart, setting a record for most No. 1s from a country LP.

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1989

May 11: Garth Brooks performs at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville with Capitol

Records’ Lynn Shults in the audience. Shults takes Garth into the kitchen

and offers him a handshake agreement with Capitol. That same evening, Jon

Vezner performs “Where’ve You Been,” and the audience’s emotional response

persuades his wife Kathy Mattea to record it; it will win multiple awards.

August 27: k.d. lang’s debut album, Shadowland, produced by Owen Bradley,

peaks at No. 9 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. The torch country LP

is inspired by Patsy Cline and features a collaboration, “Honky Tonk Angels’

Medley,” with Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, and Brenda Lee.

October 10: Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam perform “The Streets of

Bakersfield” on the 22nd annual CMA Awards at the Grand Ole Opry House,

Nashville. The song, recorded by Owens with little success in 1972, states, “You

don’t know me, but you don’t like me” – a reference to Bakersfield music being

looked down upon by the Nashville country music establishment.

October 15: Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam hit No. 1 on the Billboard country

charts with their duet, “The Streets of Bakersfield.” It is Owens’s first No. 1 in 16

years.

January: “There’s a Tear in My Beer” is released as a single and accompanying

music video by Hank Williams, Jr. A duet with his father, Hank Williams, using

pre-recorded but unreleased content, the video is a critical and commercial

success, named Video of the Year by both the Country Music Association and

the Academy of Country Music, and the two Hanks wins the GRAMMY for Best

Country Vocal Collaboration.

May 9: Country and bluegrass artist Keith Whitley is discovered at the home he

shares in Nashville with wife Lorrie Morgan, dead from alcohol poisoning at the

age of 33.

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December 9: Garth Brooks’s first released single, “If Tomorrow Never Comes,”

reaches No. 1 on the Billboard country singles chart. His second, “The Dance,”

spends three weeks there the following summer and propels his self-titled debut

album to No. 2 on the country album chart.

1990

February 27: Arista releases Alan Jackson’s debut LP, Here In the Real World. A

year later the album peaks at No. 4 and is certified Platinum. Jackson, originally

from Georgia, will have five No. 1 albums in the 1990s.

August 11: Vince Gill’s breakout single “When I Call Your Name” hits No. 2 on the

Billboard country singles chart and firmly establishes him as a new force on the

scene, earning Gill his first CMA Award (Single of the Year) and first GRAMMY

(Best Male Country Vocal Performance).

August 27: Capitol Nashville releases Garth Brooks’s second album, No Fences.

Driven by the megahit “Friends in Low Places,” it is eventually certified Diamond

(17x Platinum). In all, Brooks’s albums will be certified 137x Platinum, selling

70+ million albums – more than any other solo artist in the United States.

October 5: Columbia releases Rosanne Cash’s LP of self-penned songs, Interiors.

Label executives do not see radio potential and do not push the singles. Johnny

Cash advises his daughter to “stay true to herself.”

1991

Between 1989 and 1991, sales of country music have doubled, from $460

million to nearly $1 billion.

February 20: Kathy Mattea wins the 1990 Best Country Vocal Performance

GRAMMY Award for “Where’ve You Been,” written by her husband, Jon

Vezner, and Don Henry. The song also wins the GRAMMY for Best Country

Song, the Academy of Country Music’s Song of the Year, and the Country Music

Association’s Single of the Year.

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March 1: Billboard institutes Nielsen SoundScan: a new way of gauging a record’s

success using bar codes to keep track of actual sales (rather than calling stores

and asking for data). Country records are shown to be more successful than

previously imagined.

April 30-May 2: Emmylou Harris and her new band, The Nash Ramblers, record

a live concert at the decaying Ryman Auditorium, with special guest artist, Bill

Monroe. The event and its resulting album, At the Ryman, spark renewed interest

in the venue and its restoration.

June 15: Minnie Pearl performs her last show in Joliet, Illinois. Two days later,

she suffers a series of strokes that leave her bedridden until her death on March

4, 1996.

July 9: Roy Acuff is the first country artist to be awarded the prestigious

National Medal of the Arts, presented to him by President George H. Bush. Acuff

dies in Nashville, Tennessee, the following year, on November 23.

August 3: Trisha Yearwood’s “She’s in Love with the Boy,” hits No. 1 on Billboard’s

country singles chart – the first time for a debut single to do so since Connie

Smith’s “Once a Day,” 27 years prior – and catapults the sales of Trisha Yearwood

to become country’s first Platinum debut in two decades.

November: Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt embark upon their successful “No Hats”

tour, referencing the fact that neither artist conforms to the clean-cut cowboy

image of “Hat Acts” like George Strait and others.

December 4: The Judds end their farewell tour with a final televised show,

drawing the largest Pay-per-View audience of all time. Naomi has retired for

health reasons and the duo splits.

1992

January 21: Johnny Cash is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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1993

April 20: Mercury releases Canadian country singer Shania Twain’s self-titled

debut album. With Twain’s smooth pop style, she sells records in the tens of

millions by the end of the decade. Her third release, Come on Over, spends 50

weeks at the top of Billboard’s country LPs chart, starting in November 1997.

September 23: The first of three sold-out Garth Brooks concerts – known for

their high energy and arena rock production values – is held at Texas Stadium,

outside Dallas. The 65,675-seat venue was sold within 92 minutes, beating a

record held by Paul McCartney.

1994

April 26: Johnny Cash releases the LP American Recordings, produced by Rick

Rubin. It features sparse arrangements, Cash’s still-commanding voice, and an

eclectic song choice, and is hailed by critics as a milestone work.

June 3: After being closed for two decades and falling into decay, the Ryman

Auditorium, the Mother Church of Country Music, is reopened after its full

restoration; Little Jimmy Dickens and Marty Stuart are among the ribbon

cutters.

September 14: Johnny Cash performs at New York’s Carnegie Hall and is joined

onstage by daughter Rosanne for a duet on “I Still Miss Someone.”

1995

March 1: Johnny Cash’s American Recordings wins the GRAMMY award for Best

Contemporary Folk Album. Despite very little radio airplay, it has sold 150,000

copies – more than any LP of his since 1971.

August 28: MCA Nashville releases Vince Gill’s classic eulogic ballad, “Go Rest

High on That Mountain,” written about the tragic deaths of his older brother and

country artist Keith Whitley. It is named the Country Music Association’s Song of

the Year and receives two GRAMMYs.

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October 4: Bluegrass artist Alison Krauss wins big at the CMAs – taking home

the awards for Female Vocalist of the Year, Single of the Year (“When You Say

Nothing at All,” with Union Station), and the Horizon Award for best newcomer –

without abandoning her acoustic style and without a major label.

In 1995, 27 country albums are certified Platinum, selling more than a million

copies, and the number of country radio listeners tops 70 million, making it the

biggest format on the airwaves.

1996

February 8: President Bill Clinton signs into law the Telecommunications Act

of 1996, removing limits on media ownership, and radio stations immediately

consolidate. By 2002, just 10 companies control a 65% share of the radio

audience. Fewer people make decisions on which songs are broadcast, playlists

get shorter, and new, unconventional artists find it harder to break in.

June 11: Garth Brooks shows up unannounced at CMA’s Fan Fair in Nashville

and signs autographs for 23 hours, until every fan in line has the opportunity to

meet him.

September 9: Bill Monroe dies in Springfield, Tennessee, four days before his

85th birthday, having stopped touring in April following a stroke. Ralph Stanley,

Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, and Marty Stuart are among the performers at his

funeral, held in the Ryman Auditorium.

1997

July 8: Marty Stuart and Connie Smith marry, as Stuart had predicted after

meeting the star when he was eleven years old.

1998

February 25: Johnny Cash and producer Rick Rubin win the Best Country Album

GRAMMY for their second collaboration, Unchained (1996). Rubin takes out a

full-page ad in Billboard showing a 1969 photo of Cash giving the middle finger

“to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your

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support.”

2003

April 24: American IV: The Man Comes Around is certified Gold by the RIAA. It is

Johnny Cash’s first Gold award for a studio album.

May 15: June Carter Cash dies in Nashville, Tennessee, following complications

from heart-valve replacement surgery. She is surrounded by family, including her

husband of 35 years.

September 12: Johnny Cash dies in Nashville, Tennessee, and is buried next to

his wife, June, in nearby Hendersonville. At a star-studded memorial tribute

concert, held at the Ryman Auditorium, daughter Rosanne Cash sings “I Still Miss

Someone.”

November 5: Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around, Rick Rubin,

producer, wins three CMA Awards: Album of the Year and, for its single, “Hurt,”

written by Trent Reznor, Single of the Year and Music Video of the Year.

Documents

COUNTRY MUSIC TIMELINE - kenburns … · COUNTRY MUSIC TIMELINE 1620 John Utie, considered by historians as the first fiddler in the Americas, arrives in Jamestown, having emigrated