The Greatest Oldies Music

Country

Doctors at the University of Virginia didn’t expect Jimmy Fortune’s newborn son to live two hours. Jimmy Jr. lived 51 years. He was born with spina bifida in Charlottesville in January 1973. His father was seventeen. Fortune later said it was the most severe case the hospital had seen and that his son had been “to hell and back.” When Fortune joined the Statler Brothers as their new tenor in 1982, he’d never written a song. At a concert in 2018, he told the audience how one of his songs came about. Jimmy Jr. was in the hospital for surgery, and his father was on the road with no way to get home. So he put what he was feeling down on paper. The song reached No. 1 on November 30, 1985. It was the last No. 1 the Statler Brothers ever had. Jimmy Jr. died on October 15, 2024, after what his father described as a sudden bout of pneumonia. When Fortune shared the news, he called his son his inspiration. He still sings the song.

The song is “Too Much on My Heart.” Jimmy Fortune wrote it, the Statler Brothers took it to No. 1 on Billboard’s  country chart on November 30, 1985, and no Statler Brothers single ever reached the top again. Most fans know it as a ballad from the Pardners in Rhyme album. Far fewer know what Fortune has said was behind it: his oldest son, and a hospital stay he could not get home for.

A baby nobody expected to make it

Lester James “Jimmy” Fortune Jr. was born on January 9, 1973, in Charlottesville, Virginia. His father, born in March 1955, was still 17. The baby had spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spine does not close completely.

Years later, on the Dinner Conversations podcast, Jimmy Fortune said doctors did not expect his son to survive.

“They didn’t think he’d make it two hours.”

He said it was the worst case of spina bifida the University of Virginia hospital had ever seen. The boy made it through those first hours, and then through years that his father summed up in one blunt phrase: his son had been “to hell and back.”

The new man in the Statler Brothers

In 1982, Fortune stepped in as the Statler Brothers’ tenor for founding member Lew DeWitt, who was battling Crohn’s disease and could not return to the stage. Fortune had never written a song. When he asked whether the group would record one if he did, he later recalled, Harold Reid told him they would, as long as it was any good.

It was. Fortune’s first song, “Elizabeth,” went to No. 1 in 1984. “My Only Love” followed. The third was “Too Much on My Heart,” which the group recorded on January 15, 1985, and released as a single that July.

A father who couldn’t get home

Fortune told the story behind it at a concert in Sisseton, South Dakota, in August 2018, as reported by  country music writer Diane Diekman, who was in the audience. Fans often ask him how a song gets written, he said, and sometimes it is nothing more than writing your feelings down on paper.

This was one of those times. His son was in the hospital for surgery. Fortune was on the road with the Statler Brothers and could not be there. What he wrote down became “Too Much on My Heart.”

He did not describe the night in more detail than that, and he did not name the surgery. What he did make clear is where the song came from.

The single climbed steadily through the fall of 1985. It held No. 1 for one week and stayed on the country chart for fourteen. It was the Statler Brothers’ fourth and final country chart-topper, and Fortune had written three of the four.

The boy who kept beating the odds

Jimmy Jr. grew up and made his home in Nelson County, Virginia, the same county his father came from. On the podcast, Fortune described a frightening scare from his son’s adult years. During a family trip to Folly Beach, South Carolina, Jimmy Jr. became gravely ill and was taken to an emergency room in Charleston with three serious infections. For about three days he did not respond. Fortune had to leave for tour dates, and his son Chris stayed behind and called with updates.

One Sunday night, Chris called with bad news.

“Dad, it’s not good.”

Fortune said he got down on his knees and prayed harder than he ever had. The next morning, Chris called again. Jimmy was awake, and he was hungry. According to his father, he asked for two sweet potatoes and a glass of orange juice.

Fortune once played a benefit concert in Sauk Prairie, Wisconsin, for a foundation that helps children born with facial differences. Talking to the local paper, he explained why the cause meant something to him: when doctors helped his son, he said, they “pretty much gave him his life back.”

Fifty-one years

Jimmy Fortune Jr. died on October 15, 2024, at 51. The next day, his father told fans that his “precious son” had passed after what he described as a sudden bout of pneumonia. He thanked them for years of prayers and called Jimmy Jr. his inspiration.

His obituary remembered a man who loved the Lord, his family, the Washington Redskins, the Virginia Cavaliers and The Waltons, who enjoyed a game of cards, and who gave his time to Relay for Life. He was known for a morning greeting he never missed: “GM, I Love you All.” He was laid to rest at Ridgecrest Baptist Church Cemetery in Lovingston, Virginia.

His father still sings the song. In March 2026, at the Harvester Performance Center in Rocky Mount, Virginia, “Too Much on My Heart” was on Jimmy Fortune’s setlist.

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Alan Jackson wrote a song to sing at a funeral. Two years later, people were hearing it on country radio. Leslie Fitzgerald, known to the Jackson family as Sissy, worked in their home and was part of their everyday lives. When she died in a motorcycle accident in May 2007, Alan wrote a song for her and sang it at her funeral. He later remembered her family telling him how much it had helped them through the loss. Alan also recorded it with his longtime producer, Keith Stegall. They kept the arrangement simple: Alan’s voice, a guitar and harmony vocals. When people at his label heard the recording, they asked him to put it on his next album. It appeared on *Good Time* in 2008. The following year, it came out as a single and reached No. 9 on Billboard’s country chart. A song Alan had written for one family was now reaching people who had never known Sissy. Do you remember which Alan Jackson song it was?

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Before Toby Keith was known for the songs that got a whole bar singing, he could break your heart with a ballad like “Wish I Didn’t Know Now.” It came out in February 1994 and reached No. 2 on Billboard’s country chart. The melody is simple, and Toby gives the words room to hurt. What’s always stayed with me is how familiar that regret sounds. You think finding out the truth will make it easier to move on. Then you find yourself looking back at a memory that used to make you happy, and even that feels different now.

Country

Dolly Parton ended her tribute to Toby Keith by singing a few words without accompaniment. Anyone who knew “I Will Always Love You” would have recognized the melody. When Toby died on February 5, 2024, Dolly wrote that it was always hard to lose one of country music’s brothers and sisters. She called him one of the greats in every way and said he’d be missed, even as his music and legacy lived on. That summer, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church, Jelly Roll, Luke Bryan and Lainey Wilson were among the artists who gathered at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena for *Toby Keith: American Icon*. The concert was taped on July 29, and NBC aired the two-hour special on August 28. Dolly sent a video message. She spoke about her friend, then looked into the camera and told him they would always love him. As she reached the last few words, she let them fall into the melody of her own song. There was no band behind her. Just Dolly, singing goodbye to Toby.

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Doctors at the University of Virginia didn’t expect Jimmy Fortune’s newborn son to live two hours. Jimmy Jr. lived 51 years. He was born with spina bifida in Charlottesville in January 1973. His father was seventeen. Fortune later said it was the most severe case the hospital had seen and that his son had been “to hell and back.” When Fortune joined the Statler Brothers as their new tenor in 1982, he’d never written a song. At a concert in 2018, he told the audience how one of his songs came about. Jimmy Jr. was in the hospital for surgery, and his father was on the road with no way to get home. So he put what he was feeling down on paper. The song reached No. 1 on November 30, 1985. It was the last No. 1 the Statler Brothers ever had. Jimmy Jr. died on October 15, 2024, after what his father described as a sudden bout of pneumonia. When Fortune shared the news, he called his son his inspiration. He still sings the song.

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Alan Jackson wrote a song to sing at a funeral. Two years later, people were hearing it on country radio. Leslie Fitzgerald, known to the Jackson family as Sissy, worked in their home and was part of their everyday lives. When she died in a motorcycle accident in May 2007, Alan wrote a song for her and sang it at her funeral. He later remembered her family telling him how much it had helped them through the loss. Alan also recorded it with his longtime producer, Keith Stegall. They kept the arrangement simple: Alan’s voice, a guitar and harmony vocals. When people at his label heard the recording, they asked him to put it on his next album. It appeared on *Good Time* in 2008. The following year, it came out as a single and reached No. 9 on Billboard’s country chart. A song Alan had written for one family was now reaching people who had never known Sissy. Do you remember which Alan Jackson song it was?