The Greatest Oldies Music

Country

Dolly Parton grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio with her family in East Tennessee. Her father loved the show, and Dolly dreamed of singing on it. She moved to Nashville in 1964 and became an Opry member in January 1969. On October 12, 2019, she celebrated fifty years of membership in front of a sold-out crowd. She joked that after half a century at the Opry, she’d been given only thirty minutes. She’d have to stick to the classics. Her friends took care of a few more. Emmylou Harris, Dierks Bentley, Hank Williams Jr., Chris Janson, Lady A, Margo Price and Toby Keith were among the artists who came to honor her and sing songs from her catalog. Toby chose “Kentucky Gambler,” one of his favorites among the songs Dolly had written. His family later said he was thrilled she’d asked him to be there. NBC aired *Dolly Parton: 50 Years at the Opry* on November 26. As a girl, Dolly had listened from home and imagined what it would be like to sing on that stage. Fifty years into her Opry membership, she still had more songs than she could fit into her set.

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By the time Dolly Parton celebrated 50 years at the Grand Ole Opry, she had already spent decades working with nearly every kind of country artist imaginable. So when Toby…

Country

Toby Keith’s “Country Comes to Town” sounds like the moment a small town clocks out for the week. Released in May 2000 from *How Do You Like Me Now?!*, it gets moving right away, with guitars that keep pushing and Toby sounding like he already knows where everybody’s headed. That’s what I’ve always liked about it. I can picture the pickups lined up outside a crowded honky-tonk and old friends spotting each other across the room after a long week at work. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to turn up the radio, even if you’re just driving home.

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Released in 2000, the song wasn’t just a chart-topper (peaking at number 4 on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs chart), it became an anthem for those who find their…

Country

In June 2020, Vince Gill put his guitars aside and spent his time at a Nashville hospital while Amy Grant had open-heart surgery. She’d lived with a heart defect since birth. Two summers later, after a bicycle crash near Percy Warner Park left her unconscious and with a concussion and severe road rash, Vince cleared his calendar to care for her at home. They’d first met in late 1993 at a televised Christmas concert in Tennessee. The next year, they recorded “House of Love” together. Vince was married to country singer Janis Oliver, and Amy was married to musician Gary Chapman. They felt a connection early on, but for years their time together was work: a Christmas tour, a charity golf event, a duet. Vince put some of what he felt into his songwriting. “Whenever You Come Around” came out of those years, when he could write about how it felt to be near her even though they were still living separate lives. His divorce was finalized in 1997. Amy’s followed in 1999, and Vince gave her time to focus on her three children as her family adjusted. They married on a hillside near Nashville on March 10, 2000. Vince had a daughter, Jenny, and Amy had Matthew, Millie and Sarah. In 2001, they welcomed their daughter Corrina. More than two decades after the wedding, December still brings them back to the Ryman Auditorium to sing together. Christmas music was what brought them into the same room in 1993, when they were two singers booked for the same show. Now it’s a date they put on the calendar together. And when Amy needed time to recover, Vince was willing to clear that calendar and spend those weeks at home with her.

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TWO ICONS MET IN A NASHVILLE RECORDING STUDIO IN 1994 — BUT THE REAL STORY OF THEIR MARRIAGE LIES IN THE YEARS THEY SPENT WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TIME. When…

Country

When Kris Kristofferson’s memory began to fail, doctors told him it might be Alzheimer’s. His wife, Lisa Meyers, kept looking for an answer. By then, Kris could sometimes forget something that had happened only moments earlier. The trouble had been building for nearly a decade. Some doctors suspected Alzheimer’s; others wondered whether his years of playing football and boxing had caught up with him. In 2016, after Lisa pushed for more testing, a specialist found that Kris had Lyme disease. One possibility was that he’d picked up a tick while filming *Disappearances* in the Vermont woods in 2005. Lisa later recalled that his thinking grew clearer after he came off the Alzheimer’s medication and went through three weeks of Lyme treatment. He was able to tour again. They’d met at a gym in Malibu in 1982. Kris was 46, had put years of heavy drinking behind him, and was wary of marrying again after two divorces. Lisa was 26, studying law at Pepperdine University and working toward a life outside the music business. They married at Pepperdine’s faculty club on February 18, 1983, and eventually made a quieter home in Hana, on Maui. Kris had spent much of his three older children’s childhoods on the road. In Hawaii, he got to be home for more of the years he and Lisa spent raising Jesse, Jody, Johnny, Kelly Marie and Blake. Lisa eventually took over managing his career, too. When he went back out on tour, she traveled with him through his final years of performing. He retired in early 2021. Kris died peacefully at their Maui home on September 28, 2024. He was 88. The man who wrote “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” had spent much of his life on the road, but his last days were at home with Lisa and their family. They’d been married for forty-one years.

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HE WROTE COUNTRY MUSIC’S MOST HEARTBREAKING SONGS ABOUT BROKEN MEN AND EMPTY ROOMS — BUT FOR 41 YEARS, KRIS KRISTOFFERSON LIVED A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. In the…

Country

Little Jimmy Dickens’s hat, boots and guitar sat at center stage at the Grand Ole Opry on January 8, 2015. Brad Paisley fought back tears as he said goodbye: “At 94, your journey has ended… but we’ll take it from here, little buddy.” Dickens had first played the Opry in 1948. His last appearance was on December 20, 2014, the day after his 94th birthday. He suffered a stroke on Christmas Day and died on January 2. Jimmy had been one of the Opry members who invited a young Brad Paisley to join the cast. To Brad, he was “my hero.” To close the service, Paisley called Vince Gill, Carrie Underwood and the other Opry performers back to the stage for “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” He said it was a tradition Jimmy himself had started. The two friends had sung it there before. In 2010, floodwater had risen 46 inches above the Opry stage, covering the wooden circle cut from the old Ryman stage. When the restored circle came back, Brad and Jimmy helped the crew lower it into the floor. Then they stepped onto it together and sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”

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On the morning of January 8, 2015, the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville filled with mourners. Little Jimmy Dickens, the Opry’s oldest member, had died six days earlier at…

Country

When Don Reid was asked in 2021 what life was like after the Statler Brothers retired, he could have talked about any of his three Grammys. What he wanted to talk about was Wednesday lunch. Every Wednesday, he sat down with his sons, Debo and Langdon. Lunch usually lasted hours. They caught up on family and business and, as Don put it, “everything that’s on our hearts.” For nearly four decades, the Statlers had spent much of their time on a tour bus. They had hit records and the top-rated show on The Nashville Network, but they never moved to Nashville. They ran the business from an old elementary school they bought and renovated in Staunton, Virginia, in 1980. Their last show was on October 26, 2002, at the Salem Civic Center. Tickets sold out in under 90 minutes. Before the night was over, Don thanked the people who’d helped keep the group going, from wives and mothers to soundmen and bus drivers. Then the four men sang “Amazing Grace,” the first song they’d ever sung together. Years later, Don said it was the travel they’d wanted to give up. He liked having more time with his wife, Debbie. He still went to an office in Staunton, which he shared with Phil Balsley, the baritone who’d sung beside him for more than forty years. And on Wednesdays, he had lunch with his boys.

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In 2021, nineteen years after The Statler Brothers walked off a stage for the last time, Don Reid picked up the phone in Staunton, Virginia, to talk about a new…

Country

Nine days before Jerry Reed played guitar for Elvis Presley, he recorded a song about a talent scout who let a future star walk right out of his office. On September 1, 1967, Reed was at RCA’s Nashville studio with producer Chet Atkins. The song was a fictional comedy about a young guitarist from Tupelo, Mississippi, who shows up at a record company hoping for a break. The scout hears him out and sends him on his way. By the time the kid becomes famous, the man who turned him down has plenty of reason to remember that audition. On September 10, Reed was back in the studio, this time playing guitar on Elvis’s version of “Guitar Man.” He’d just recorded a joke about somebody passing up a young man from Tupelo, and now he was helping Elvis make a record. That comedy song gave Reed his first Top 20 country hit, reaching No. 15. Do you remember what it was called?

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On September 1, 1967, Jerry Reed recorded a song about a young guitarist from Tupelo, Mississippi, who walked into a record-company office hoping for a chance. The talent scout dismissed…

Country

One of Merle Haggard’s loneliest barroom songs was written for a Clint Eastwood comedy by the two men behind Cher’s “Dark Lady.” Merle had drawn on his own life for songs like “Mama Tried” and “Sing Me Back Home.” This one came from Snuff Garrett, who’d produced pop hits for Bobby Vee and Cher, and John Durrill, the Ventures organist who wrote “Dark Lady.” Cher had taken it to No. 1 in 1974. In 1980, Garrett was handling the music for Eastwood’s *Bronco Billy*. Merle had a small part in the movie, playing himself. Garrett and Durrill gave him a song about a man sitting in a bar, trying to drink a woman off his mind. Merle’s recording reached No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart and opened his next album, *Back to the Barrooms*. He wrote most of the other songs on the record himself. *Bronco Billy* also gave Merle a duet with Eastwood that went all the way to No. 1. Five years later, when Merle played *Austin City Limits*, he was still singing the barroom song.

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The song is “Misery and Gin.” Merle Haggard took it to No. 3 on Billboard’s country chart in 1980, and it still sounds like something he pulled straight out of…

Country

Hank Williams went fishing on Kentucky Lake with a song title he couldn’t do much with. It took an impatient question from the man fishing beside him to give him the first line. “Lovesick Blues” had made Hank a star in 1949. He’d had several hits since, but he was still waiting for another No. 1. On the trip with his friend and fellow songwriter Vic McAlpin, Hank couldn’t sleep. He kept turning that title over in his head. They’d gone up to where the Tennessee River widens into Kentucky Lake. Once they were out on the water, Hank still wasn’t paying much attention to the fishing. McAlpin finally spoke up. “You come here to fish or watch the fish swim by?” “Hey! That’s the first line!” The rest of the song grew out of the scene around them, with McAlpin adding a few lines. Hank recorded it in Nashville in January 1950. He cut a backup song in case it didn’t catch on, but by spring, the fishing song was No. 1 on the country chart. Hank later bought out McAlpin’s share. His name is the only one on the label.

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The song was “Long Gone Lonesome Blues,” and it opens with a man going down to the river to watch the fish swim by. That opening didn’t come from a…

Country

Loretta Lynn still had curlers under her headscarf when a woman came backstage in tears. Her husband had refused to bring her to the concert. Now he was sitting in the second row with another woman. As Loretta later told it, she went to the curtain with her and looked out at the crowd. The woman pointed to her husband and the girlfriend he’d brought to the show. Loretta said a few words to reassure her, then went back to her dressing room. The words she’d just said stayed with her. She turned them into a song, and she remembered writing it in about ten minutes. The single came out in 1966 and reached No. 2 on the country chart. It was Loretta’s biggest hit up to that point, and it started with something she said to one woman before she’d even taken the stage. Do you know which Loretta Lynn song it was?

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One of Loretta Lynn’s most unforgettable songs began with a woman in tears, a husband sitting in the wrong company, and an unexpected encounter behind a stage curtain. The song…

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Country

Dolly Parton grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio with her family in East Tennessee. Her father loved the show, and Dolly dreamed of singing on it. She moved to Nashville in 1964 and became an Opry member in January 1969. On October 12, 2019, she celebrated fifty years of membership in front of a sold-out crowd. She joked that after half a century at the Opry, she’d been given only thirty minutes. She’d have to stick to the classics. Her friends took care of a few more. Emmylou Harris, Dierks Bentley, Hank Williams Jr., Chris Janson, Lady A, Margo Price and Toby Keith were among the artists who came to honor her and sing songs from her catalog. Toby chose “Kentucky Gambler,” one of his favorites among the songs Dolly had written. His family later said he was thrilled she’d asked him to be there. NBC aired *Dolly Parton: 50 Years at the Opry* on November 26. As a girl, Dolly had listened from home and imagined what it would be like to sing on that stage. Fifty years into her Opry membership, she still had more songs than she could fit into her set.

Country

Toby Keith’s “Country Comes to Town” sounds like the moment a small town clocks out for the week. Released in May 2000 from *How Do You Like Me Now?!*, it gets moving right away, with guitars that keep pushing and Toby sounding like he already knows where everybody’s headed. That’s what I’ve always liked about it. I can picture the pickups lined up outside a crowded honky-tonk and old friends spotting each other across the room after a long week at work. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to turn up the radio, even if you’re just driving home.

Country

In June 2020, Vince Gill put his guitars aside and spent his time at a Nashville hospital while Amy Grant had open-heart surgery. She’d lived with a heart defect since birth. Two summers later, after a bicycle crash near Percy Warner Park left her unconscious and with a concussion and severe road rash, Vince cleared his calendar to care for her at home. They’d first met in late 1993 at a televised Christmas concert in Tennessee. The next year, they recorded “House of Love” together. Vince was married to country singer Janis Oliver, and Amy was married to musician Gary Chapman. They felt a connection early on, but for years their time together was work: a Christmas tour, a charity golf event, a duet. Vince put some of what he felt into his songwriting. “Whenever You Come Around” came out of those years, when he could write about how it felt to be near her even though they were still living separate lives. His divorce was finalized in 1997. Amy’s followed in 1999, and Vince gave her time to focus on her three children as her family adjusted. They married on a hillside near Nashville on March 10, 2000. Vince had a daughter, Jenny, and Amy had Matthew, Millie and Sarah. In 2001, they welcomed their daughter Corrina. More than two decades after the wedding, December still brings them back to the Ryman Auditorium to sing together. Christmas music was what brought them into the same room in 1993, when they were two singers booked for the same show. Now it’s a date they put on the calendar together. And when Amy needed time to recover, Vince was willing to clear that calendar and spend those weeks at home with her.

Country

When Kris Kristofferson’s memory began to fail, doctors told him it might be Alzheimer’s. His wife, Lisa Meyers, kept looking for an answer. By then, Kris could sometimes forget something that had happened only moments earlier. The trouble had been building for nearly a decade. Some doctors suspected Alzheimer’s; others wondered whether his years of playing football and boxing had caught up with him. In 2016, after Lisa pushed for more testing, a specialist found that Kris had Lyme disease. One possibility was that he’d picked up a tick while filming *Disappearances* in the Vermont woods in 2005. Lisa later recalled that his thinking grew clearer after he came off the Alzheimer’s medication and went through three weeks of Lyme treatment. He was able to tour again. They’d met at a gym in Malibu in 1982. Kris was 46, had put years of heavy drinking behind him, and was wary of marrying again after two divorces. Lisa was 26, studying law at Pepperdine University and working toward a life outside the music business. They married at Pepperdine’s faculty club on February 18, 1983, and eventually made a quieter home in Hana, on Maui. Kris had spent much of his three older children’s childhoods on the road. In Hawaii, he got to be home for more of the years he and Lisa spent raising Jesse, Jody, Johnny, Kelly Marie and Blake. Lisa eventually took over managing his career, too. When he went back out on tour, she traveled with him through his final years of performing. He retired in early 2021. Kris died peacefully at their Maui home on September 28, 2024. He was 88. The man who wrote “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down” had spent much of his life on the road, but his last days were at home with Lisa and their family. They’d been married for forty-one years.