The Greatest Oldies Music

Country

When Sevierville, Tennessee, put up a bronze statue of Dolly Parton in 1987, her father had a joke ready. Fans might see an idol, he told her, but the pigeons saw an outhouse. Dolly was delighted to have a statue outside the county courthouse in her hometown. She proudly told her father, Robert Lee Parton, about the honor. His teasing was familiar; fame had never stopped him from keeping his daughter’s feet on the ground. But there was something he didn’t tell her. Late at night, he would put a big drum of soapy water and a broom in his pickup, drive to the courthouse and wash the pigeon droppings off the bronze. Dolly knew nothing about those trips while he was alive. After his death, one of her brothers told her what their father had been doing. Years later, she recalled the story on *Jimmy Kimmel Live!* and said she’d cried her eyes out. He’d let her hear the joke. He’d kept the cleaning trips to himself.

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In 1987, Dolly Parton received an honor that few country singers could ever imagine. The people of Sevierville, Tennessee, decided to place a bronze statue of Dolly Parton outside their…

Country

Johnny Cash needed a lyric sheet to get through the song. The performance became the biggest pop hit of his career. Shel Silverstein, the cartoonist and author of *The Giving Tree*, had played it at a Nashville guitar pull, where songwriters took turns sharing songs. June Carter Cash heard it and urged Johnny to give it a try. He did, at San Quentin State Prison on February 24, 1969. Cash had barely studied the words, so he kept them in front of him onstage. The band had no sheet to follow. Carl Perkins and the other musicians worked out the backing while Johnny sang. The prisoners loved it. Cash later said even he was surprised by the response. That live recording reached No. 1 on the country chart and No. 2 on the pop chart. For three weeks, the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” kept it from the top. Cash won a Grammy for the performance, and Silverstein won one for writing it. If you’ve ever sung along in the car, you probably know what happened to the boy in the story. What’s the song?

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The song is “A Boy Named Sue.” Johnny Cash sang it for the first time in his life on February 24, 1969, inside San Quentin State Prison, with the words…

Country

In Jerry Reed’s final months, emphysema left him without enough breath to play guitar. He could still laugh, though. Sometimes he laughed so hard he had to make himself stop and get serious long enough to breathe again. Being unable to play was his one regret about the instrument. His “claw” picking had once left even the musicians working on Elvis Presley’s sessions struggling to figure out what he was doing. Family and friends came to spend time with him. Brenda Lee, who’d taken one of his songs into the Top 10 in 1960, visited. So did Bobby Bare, who had shared hundreds of quiet hours with Jerry out fishing. They kept telling stories and making each other laugh. Jerry had also used some of his remaining strength to make a final album to raise money for wounded veterans. During a visit that August, he told Bare something he’d been thinking about: every dream he’d ever had had come true. He died on September 1, 2008, at 71. A few years earlier, Jerry had put it this way: “I’m a cotton mill boy, and I got to go to Hollywood.”

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By the summer of 2008, Jerry Reed could no longer play the guitar. Emphysema had worn his lungs down, and the man who once made a guitar sound like three…

Country

In 1989, Charley Pride was hospitalized in a Dallas psychiatric ward. Fans knew the voice behind “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” Few knew about the illness he had been living with for years. His first serious episode came in 1968, after performing for American troops in Germany. He couldn’t sleep and became paranoid and confused. He was hospitalized, but resisted when doctors told him he would need lifelong medication. He continued performing. In 1971, he won CMA Entertainer of the Year. At RCA, only Elvis sold more records. Another episode in 1982 led him to take lithium. He later stopped because he believed it had caused a skin rash. In 1989, he was hospitalized again. Rozene, his wife, encouraged him to tell the story. In his 1994 autobiography, Pride described the hospital stays and his behavior during episodes, including throwing televisions. Speaking publicly didn’t settle every private doubt. Three years later, he acknowledged that part of him still wanted to deny the illness. “But I’m on lithium,” he said.

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By 1989, Charley Pride had already done what few in Nashville once thought possible. He had become country music’s first Black superstar, won CMA Entertainer of the Year in 1971,…

Country

When “I’m Over You” reached country radio in January 1990, Keith Whitley had been gone for eight months. In the song, he calmly dismisses stories that he’s drinking too much and falling apart. Keith recorded it in the spring of 1989 for an album he co-produced with Garth Fundis. The character has heard the rumors: he looks tired, he’s taking the breakup badly, he’s spending too much time drinking. His answer is to wonder why anyone would make up such things. That spring, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” became Keith’s third consecutive No. 1. On May 9, he spoke to his mother by phone, drank coffee with his brother-in-law Lane Palmer and made plans for golf. Lane left around 8:30 that morning. When he returned about an hour later, Keith was unconscious. He died of alcohol poisoning at 34, with a blood alcohol level of .47. By late May 1990, “I’m Over You” had reached No. 3. Listeners were hearing a living voice deny a drinking problem, knowing the singer had died from one. The single’s other side was “Tennessee Courage,” a barroom song that calls Jack Daniel’s a friend.

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In the spring of 1990, one of the biggest songs on country radio was Keith Whitley’s “I’m Over You.” It climbed all the way to No. 3 on the Billboard…

Country

Merle Haggard played bass for Buck Owens for only a few weeks. He stayed long enough to give the band its name. Around 1962, Buck was putting together a regular band around his young guitarist, Don Rich. He’d grown tired of relying on whichever musicians a club could find. Merle had been paroled from San Quentin in 1960 and was playing Bakersfield clubs, hoping to get his own career moving. For a short time, he took the bass job with Buck. When Buck asked what they ought to call the new group, Merle had an answer: the Buckaroos. Merle soon moved on, but the name stayed. In 1963, the Buckaroos played on “Act Naturally,” Buck’s first No. 1, followed by years of hits. Merle formed the Strangers, and the two men became leading voices of the Bakersfield sound. On March 25, 2006, Merle recalled those early days after learning Buck had died. Only hours earlier, Buck had played one last show at his Crystal Palace. “We were outlaws together,” Merle said.

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One of the most famous bands in country music history was named by a man who barely stayed long enough to learn the set list. Around 1962, Buck Owens was…

Country

When Willie Nelson handed Columbia Records *Red Headed Stranger* in 1975, some executives thought he’d brought them a demo. They heard his voice, guitar and piano, with room between the notes where they expected more instruments. Willie considered the record finished. He’d spent years making records in Nashville with producers shaping the arrangements around him. Now he had a contract that gave him creative control, and he used it. He recorded the album inexpensively in Texas, leaving out the orchestral arrangements and extra polish that had surrounded much of his earlier work. Columbia’s Nashville executives wanted a fuller sound, but they had little room to insist. The album became a million seller and brought Willie the commercial breakthrough he’d been working toward. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” a song dating back to 1945, gave him his first No. 1 country single as a recording artist. Its spare arrangement was much of what made people stop and listen. That success gave weight to an argument Willie and Waylon Jennings had been making: singers should have a say in how their own records sounded. For artists pushing against Nashville’s production system, *Red Headed Stranger* offered something more useful than a debate. It sold. The spaces that worried the executives stayed on the record. Buyers heard Willie’s voice clearly, followed the story, and kept bringing the album home.

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WILLIE NELSON DELIVERED AN ALBUM COLUMBIA THOUGHT SOUNDED LIKE A DEMO—THEN IT BECAME A CLASSIC Willie Nelson handed Red Headed Stranger to Columbia Records in 1975, and some people at…

Country

When Gene Watson was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2000, he made room for treatment in a schedule that still included shows. Working through pain was something he had learned long before singing paid his bills. He underwent surgery and treatment, sometimes traveling to a performance while still feeling the effects. He later remembered how raw and painful his mouth could be afterward. Yet he kept going to the next booking. Staying home was difficult for a man who had grown up believing that work had to continue, even when you felt terrible. Watson’s family had followed seasonal jobs around Texas. Sometimes they traveled by bus so his father could find work. There wasn’t much money to fall back on, and a day without wages could mean trouble putting food on the table. Gene watched his father keep working because the family depended on him. Years later, songs such as “Love in the Hot Afternoon” and “Farewell Party” had given Watson a living very different from his father’s. But the habits of that childhood stayed with him. He recovered from cancer and carried on recording and touring. The shows he played during treatment came at a physical cost. His decision to keep those dates reflected a rule he had lived by for years, learned while watching his father look for the next job.

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GENE WATSON FOUGHT CANCER THE SAME WAY HE HAD FOUGHT POVERTY: GET TREATED, THEN GET BACK TO WORK Gene Watson had been working through discomfort long before country music ever…

Country

Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn had each spent more than a decade trying to make a solo career work when Tim DuBois invited them to lunch in 1990. The Arista Nashville chief had a suggestion: try making music together. Neither man had been looking for a partner. Brooks was a songwriter who’d also made solo records. Dunn had sung with bands, released independent recordings and won a talent competition before moving to Nashville. DuBois heard something in the two of them that he thought would work as a duo. They were hesitant, but agreed to give it a chance. The result was *Brand New Man*. Its first four singles—“Brand New Man,” “My Next Broken Heart,” “Neon Moon” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”—all reached No. 1. The album sold millions of copies, and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” helped send people onto dance floors across the country. Within a year, two singers who’d struggled separately were becoming familiar voices on country radio. Their records put honky-tonk rhythms alongside loud guitars, and their shows brought that sound into arenas. Brooks & Dunn eventually became country music’s best-selling duo. By then, it was easy to hear why they belonged together. That hadn’t been obvious to either of them at lunch. They’d arrived with years of work behind them, each still trying to find a way forward on his own. DuBois asked them to try a partnership, and they stayed long enough to find out what it could sound like.

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BROOKS & DUNN WERE TWO STALLED SOLO CAREERS—UNTIL ONE LUNCH CHANGED 1990s COUNTRY Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn did not grow up planning to become a famous country duo. By…

Oldies Musics

It is one of the most astonishing miracles of human history that forty-two short years could contain a light so massive, so blindingly bright, that it managed to illuminate the entire world—and keep burning long after he was gone. When you picture that quiet, barefoot boy starting out in the dust of Tupelo, holding onto little more than a mother’s prayers and an old guitar, the distance to global adoration feels impossible. Yet he bridged that distance with nothing more than the profound truth of his own soul. He didn’t just sing notes; he carried a frequency of comfort and understanding that slipped past all our defenses. For the lonely, the heartbroken, and the searching souls scattered across continents and decades, his voice was a sanctuary—a quiet assurance that no matter how heavy the world felt, someone out there understood the exact rhythm of your pain. He left the earth with empty pockets just as he entered it, but he gifted humanity something immortal: a piece of his own heart, forever echoing in ours.

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The world was given only 42 years with Elvis Presley, and somehow, that was enough for him to leave a piece of himself in millions of hearts forever. Born into…

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Country

When Sevierville, Tennessee, put up a bronze statue of Dolly Parton in 1987, her father had a joke ready. Fans might see an idol, he told her, but the pigeons saw an outhouse. Dolly was delighted to have a statue outside the county courthouse in her hometown. She proudly told her father, Robert Lee Parton, about the honor. His teasing was familiar; fame had never stopped him from keeping his daughter’s feet on the ground. But there was something he didn’t tell her. Late at night, he would put a big drum of soapy water and a broom in his pickup, drive to the courthouse and wash the pigeon droppings off the bronze. Dolly knew nothing about those trips while he was alive. After his death, one of her brothers told her what their father had been doing. Years later, she recalled the story on *Jimmy Kimmel Live!* and said she’d cried her eyes out. He’d let her hear the joke. He’d kept the cleaning trips to himself.

Country

Johnny Cash needed a lyric sheet to get through the song. The performance became the biggest pop hit of his career. Shel Silverstein, the cartoonist and author of *The Giving Tree*, had played it at a Nashville guitar pull, where songwriters took turns sharing songs. June Carter Cash heard it and urged Johnny to give it a try. He did, at San Quentin State Prison on February 24, 1969. Cash had barely studied the words, so he kept them in front of him onstage. The band had no sheet to follow. Carl Perkins and the other musicians worked out the backing while Johnny sang. The prisoners loved it. Cash later said even he was surprised by the response. That live recording reached No. 1 on the country chart and No. 2 on the pop chart. For three weeks, the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” kept it from the top. Cash won a Grammy for the performance, and Silverstein won one for writing it. If you’ve ever sung along in the car, you probably know what happened to the boy in the story. What’s the song?

Country

In Jerry Reed’s final months, emphysema left him without enough breath to play guitar. He could still laugh, though. Sometimes he laughed so hard he had to make himself stop and get serious long enough to breathe again. Being unable to play was his one regret about the instrument. His “claw” picking had once left even the musicians working on Elvis Presley’s sessions struggling to figure out what he was doing. Family and friends came to spend time with him. Brenda Lee, who’d taken one of his songs into the Top 10 in 1960, visited. So did Bobby Bare, who had shared hundreds of quiet hours with Jerry out fishing. They kept telling stories and making each other laugh. Jerry had also used some of his remaining strength to make a final album to raise money for wounded veterans. During a visit that August, he told Bare something he’d been thinking about: every dream he’d ever had had come true. He died on September 1, 2008, at 71. A few years earlier, Jerry had put it this way: “I’m a cotton mill boy, and I got to go to Hollywood.”

Country

In 1989, Charley Pride was hospitalized in a Dallas psychiatric ward. Fans knew the voice behind “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’.” Few knew about the illness he had been living with for years. His first serious episode came in 1968, after performing for American troops in Germany. He couldn’t sleep and became paranoid and confused. He was hospitalized, but resisted when doctors told him he would need lifelong medication. He continued performing. In 1971, he won CMA Entertainer of the Year. At RCA, only Elvis sold more records. Another episode in 1982 led him to take lithium. He later stopped because he believed it had caused a skin rash. In 1989, he was hospitalized again. Rozene, his wife, encouraged him to tell the story. In his 1994 autobiography, Pride described the hospital stays and his behavior during episodes, including throwing televisions. Speaking publicly didn’t settle every private doubt. Three years later, he acknowledged that part of him still wanted to deny the illness. “But I’m on lithium,” he said.