Country Music

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On May 7, 1972, Marty Robbins lined up for the Winston 500 at Talladega. He was 46, a country star who raced stock cars on his days off, and had never once run up front. The night before, in his motel room, he knocked the mandatory restrictor out of his carburetor. On race day his Dodge ran fifteen miles an hour faster than it had qualified. He passed Richard Petty. Afterward, NASCAR sent an official to bring him to Victory Lane for Rookie of the Race. Robbins refused it and said he had been running illegal. The man laughed and told him to hurry up. Robbins said it again. His result was voided and he was fined $250. Two years later that same instinct cost him more than $250. October 1974, Charlotte, second lap. Cars wrecked and stopped sideways across the straightaway. Robbins came down on them at 160 miles an hour, knowing men were still sitting inside. So he turned into the wall instead. The driver he swerved to miss was Richard Childress, who walked away and later became one of the biggest team owners in NASCAR. Robbins raced eight more years on a bad heart. His last race was at Atlanta on November 7, 1982. He died a month later, at 57.

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Marty Robbins and the Choices That Made Him More Than a Racer On May 7, 1972, at Talladega, Marty Robbins…

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WILLIE NELSON LIED WHEN RAY PRICE ASKED IF HE COULD PLAY BASS. RAY HIRED HIM ANYWAY — MORE THAN 50 YEARS LATER, WILLIE RECORDED AN ENTIRE ALBUM FOR THE MAN WHO GAVE HIM THAT CHANCE. Willie Nelson was still trying to find his place in Nashville when a spot opened in Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys. Ray called him. “Can you play bass?” Willie’s answer was pure Willie: “Hell, can’t everybody?” The truth was, he had never played bass before. Ray hired him anyway. For about a year, Willie traveled with one of country music’s biggest stars, playing bass behind Ray and opening the shows himself. He had few songs of his own to perform, so he sang Hank Williams numbers while crowds impatiently called out, “Where’s Ray?” But Ray Price had given him something Willie needed badly — a place on the road and a chance to keep going. Their friendship lasted for decades. They recorded together repeatedly, including San Antonio Rose in 1980. Then, three years after Ray died, Willie returned the favor in the only way he could. He recorded an entire album for his old friend: For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price.

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When Ray Price Gave Willie Nelson a Chance, Country Music Got a Full Circle Story Before Willie Nelson became a…

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RAY PRICE ASKED HANK WILLIAMS TO SPEND CHRISTMAS WITH HIS MOTHER. HANK SAID THEY’D HAVE LUNCH ON NEW YEAR’S DAY. HE NEVER MADE IT. Dallas, December 1952. Ray Price ran into Hank Williams for what would become the last time. By then, they were more than two country singers who knew each other. Hank had taken Ray on the road, encouraged him to move to Nashville, helped him reach the Grand Ole Opry, and even lived with him for a time. Ray later called Hank “about the only mentor I ever had.” That Christmas, Ray invited Hank to spend the holiday with him and his mother. Hank wasn’t sure what his plans were, so they agreed to meet again around their New Year’s shows in Ohio. Ray would be in Akron. Hank was headed for Canton, only about 35 miles away. They planned to have lunch. Hank Williams never arrived. He died on the journey to Ohio and was pronounced dead on January 1, 1953, at just 29. Ray Price would later remember simply: “We were going to have lunch together, but he didn’t make it.”

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Hank Williams Never Made It to Lunch Dallas in December 1952 should have felt full of holiday noise: crowded streets,…

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HE HAD ALREADY PLAYED HIS “FINAL FAREWELL CONCERT.” FOUR YEARS LATER, JUST DAYS BEFORE COUNTRY MUSIC PUT HIM IN ITS HALL OF FAME, DON WILLIAMS WALKED BACK ONTO THE RYMAN STAGE. November 21, 2006. Memphis. Don Williams finished his Farewell Tour before a sold-out crowd at the Cannon Center. Then the Gentle Giant did exactly what he said he would do: he stepped away from live performing. For nearly four years, fans had every reason to believe the goodbye was permanent. Then came 2010. Don was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame. And that October, at 71 years old, he came out of touring retirement. On October 20 and 21, he returned to Nashville for two nights at the Ryman Auditorium — just days before his Hall of Fame induction on October 24. There was no reinvention. No flashy comeback. Just Don, that deep familiar voice, and songs his audience had carried for decades: “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” “Tulsa Time,” “Amanda,” “I Believe in You” and “You’re My Best Friend.” The man who had already said goodbye simply came back and sang again.

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Don Williams Returned to the Ryman After Saying Goodbye On November 21, 2006, in Memphis, Don Williams closed a chapter…

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MERLE HAGGARD WAS INVITED TO ESCAPE SAN QUENTIN. HE STAYED BEHIND. THE MAN WHO LEFT WAS LATER EXECUTED — AND HELPED INSPIRE A NO. 1 SONG. Before Merle Haggard became a country legend, he was an inmate at San Quentin. One of the prisoners he knew was Jimmy “Rabbit” Kendrick. Rabbit had worked out an escape plan and invited Merle to go with him. Merle thought about it. Then he stayed. Rabbit escaped, but was captured about two weeks later. He was eventually sentenced to death for killing a California Highway Patrol officer and was executed in 1961. Merle never forgot what it felt like to watch a man he knew make that final walk. Years later, those prison memories helped become “Sing Me Back Home” — the story of a condemned prisoner asking for one last song before he dies. Released in 1967, it became Merle Haggard’s third No. 1 country hit. He had left San Quentin behind. But San Quentin never completely left his songs.

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Merle Haggard, San Quentin, and the Song That Came From a Prison Memory Before Merle Haggard became a country legend,…

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COLE SWINDELL WROTE “YOU SHOULD BE HERE” FOR HIS DEAD FATHER. ELEVEN YEARS LATER, HE SAVED HIM A SEAT AT HIS WEDDING. Cole Swindell’s father, William Keith Swindell, died unexpectedly in 2013, shortly after Cole signed his record deal. The loss followed him into the writing room. When songwriter Ashley Gorley brought up the title “You Should Be Here,” Cole immediately knew who the song was about. He wrote it for his dad. Released in 2015, the song went all the way to No. 1. But its simplest message never changed: there were moments in Cole’s life when one person was missing. Then came June 12, 2024. Cole married Courtney Little in California. Among the chairs at the ceremony was one that would remain empty. It had been reserved for his father. Eleven years after losing him, Cole had reached one of the biggest days of his life. And once again, the same thought was there: You should be here.

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Cole Swindell’s Song, His Father’s Memory, and the Empty Chair That Said Everything Some songs begin as an idea, then…

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KENNY CHESNEY PASSED ON IT. SO DID THE ARTIST IT WAS WRITTEN FOR. THEN IT SPENT 8 WEEKS AT NO. 1. It took two hours to write. It took eight weeks to leave the top of the country chart. February 2003. Don Rollins was writing with Jim “Moose” Brown when Moose mentioned a new artist, Colt Prather, who wanted something with a Buffett feel. Rollins had a title sitting in his back pocket — a line he’d picked up years earlier from a fellow band teacher. Two hours later they were done. They swapped the first verse with the second. That was the only rewrite. They cut the demo in March. Acoustic guitars, steel drum samples, very island. The guy they hired to sing it was an unknown around town named Chris Stapleton. Then Colt Prather’s producer passed on it. Kenny Chesney passed too. Rollins put it out of his mind and moved on. When word came that Alan Jackson had it on hold, Rollins’ first thought was that Alan was way too country for that song. Then somebody said the name Buffett. Out June 2. Seven straight weeks at No. 1, knocked off by Dierks Bentley’s debut single, then straight back to the top after Alan and Jimmy played it on the CMA broadcast. Buffett’s first No. 1. Thirty years in, his first award of any kind.

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It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere: The Song That Said Yes After Everyone Else Said No In February 2003, Don Rollins sat…

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HE WROTE IT AS A JOKE IN 20 MINUTES. IT SPENT 4 WEEKS AT NO. 1. They were rolling down Interstate 40 when a road sign passed the window. Muskogee, 19 miles. Merle Haggard turned to his drummer, Roy Edward Burris, and said he bet nobody in that town smoked marijuana. It was a joke. Something to make the bus laugh. Twenty minutes later the song was finished. Haggard said years afterward that they wrote it to be satirical. But America didn’t hear satire. “Okie from Muskogee” hit No. 1 in the fall of 1969 and sat there four weeks. It won Single of the Year from both the ACM and the CMA. Richard Nixon asked him to play it at the White House. Then in 1974, a reporter in Michigan brought it up, and Haggard told him the only place he doesn’t smoke is Muskogee. Later in life he described the song a completely different way again — and that version had nothing to do with politics, or protesters, or pride. It had to do with someone he lost when he was nine. He never really settled the question. He just kept singing it.

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Merle Haggard and the Song That Refused to Sit Still They were rolling down Interstate 40 when a road sign…

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“I WANTED TO COMPETE WITH MY HEROES.” HE SAID THAT AFTER WALKING AWAY FROM THE ONLY NO.1 POP SINGLE OF HIS CAREER. In 1958, a song Conway Twitty wrote on the road hit No.1 and charted in 22 countries. Eight million copies. People heard that growl on the radio and swore it was Elvis. Seven years later, in a New Jersey club, he stopped mid-set, set his guitar down, and walked off. The band was still playing behind him. He never came back to rock and roll. He had a wife and three kids at home, and a room full of strangers in front of him screaming for “It’s Only Make Believe.” By then the title felt about right. What he wanted instead was something he’d been too embarrassed to say out loud. He wanted to sing country — and in his own words, to compete with his heroes. Nashville didn’t open the door. He was the rock and roll guy, and radio took its time. Not until 1968 did “Next in Line” give him his first country No.1 — and 1970 brought “Hello Darlin’.” He ended with 40 No.1 country hits. Not one of them was the song that made him famous.

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I Wanted to Compete With My Heroes In 1958, Conway Twitty was still living in the space between ambition and…

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“IF SOMEBODY’S COME ALL THAT WAY, I’M GONNA DO THE SHOW.” HE WAS 76. HE HAD HOURS LEFT. He wasn’t going to play that night. March 24, 2006. Buck Owens had felt sick all day. He came to the Crystal Palace — the club he built in Bakersfield — and decided to go home without taking the stage. He got as far as the parking lot. A family stopped him there. They’d driven 723 miles from Bend, Oregon, just to hear him sing. He turned around and walked back inside. What he said from that stage is the line Bakersfield still repeats. But first the Buckaroos had to get set up again, and a sick 76-year-old man had to find a full 90 minutes somewhere in himself. He gave them all 90, the way he always did. Then, into the mic: “If somebody’s come all that way, I’m gonna do the show.” He drove home to his ranch afterward. He died in his sleep before morning. The Palace kept his music going almost twenty more years without him. In 2025, his family announced they were closing the doors.

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When Buck Owens Chose the Show On March 24, 2006, Buck Owens did not feel well enough to perform. The…

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WHEN JERRY JEFF WALKER WROTE THE SONG THAT MADE HIM FAMOUS, HE NEVER LEARNED THE MAN’S REAL NAME. He met him in a New Orleans jail cell in 1965. Walker had been picked up for public drunkenness in the French Quarter, early on a Monday morning after the Fourth of July weekend. The old man was in there because police had swept up the street people after a murder nearby. He was white, homeless, silver-haired, in worn-out shoes. He made his living dancing in Quarter bars for drinks. He called himself Mr. Bojangles — a name street dancers borrowed from tap star Bill “Bojangles” Robinson — so the police would never have his own. Then he started talking about his dog, dead years earlier, and the cell went quiet. Another inmate asked for something to lift the mood. The old man got up in his ragged clothes and danced on the concrete. Walker recorded the song in 1968. It reached No. 77. Two years later the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band cut it and took it to No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Sammy Davis Jr. made it his signature. Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, John Denver, Neil Diamond — hundreds of versions since. Not one of them carries the man’s name, because nobody ever knew it.

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TOBY KEITH’S FATHER ASKED HIM FOR ONE THING, AND KEITH SPENT ELEVEN YEARS ANSWERING IT. His dad was a veteran, and he kept pushing his son to go play a USO tour. Keith’s answer was that he was already doing 150 shows a year and didn’t have the time. His father told him to find time. The year Keith finally agreed to go, his father was killed in a car wreck. Keith went anyway. He said he went for him. That one trip became eleven tours beginning in 2002 — nearly 300 shows in 17 countries for more than 250,000 service members, by the USO’s count. In April 2008 in Kandahar, mortar fire hit the base in the middle of a song and his band ran about a hundred yards to a concrete bunker. At Landstuhl in Germany, he walked the wards where the wounded arrived from Iraq, and said afterward that he had spent the visit searching for the right words to say. He kept going back for eleven years while other headliners stayed home. The morning after Keith died in February 2024, Kid Rock called in to Fox & Friends and brought up the joke the two of them had kept for years, arguing over which one went overseas more often. Then he settled it himself. Toby, he said, probably went more than he did.

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ERIC CHURCH ONCE THOUGHT ABOUT GIVING UP ON NASHVILLE. A KRIS KRISTOFFERSON SONG HELPED KEEP HIM THERE. YEARS LATER, THE MAN WHO SAVED HIS DREAM BECAME HIS FRIEND. Before the arenas and No. 1 records, Eric Church spent years hearing “no” in Nashville. At one point, he wondered whether it was time to leave. Then he heard Kris Kristofferson’s “To Beat the Devil” — a song about a struggling songwriter trying to survive long enough for someone to listen. Church later said it described exactly what he was going through. In 2016, Eric stood inside Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena at a concert honoring Kris and sang that very song with Kristofferson sitting nearby. He told the crowd he might not have been there without it. Eight years later, Kris died at 88. Eric’s goodbye revealed how far their relationship had traveled: “You were my hero and my role model. And even then, you managed to exceed my expectations when you became my friend.” Kris Kristofferson helped Eric Church before he ever knew him. Then he gave him something even better than inspiration. He gave him his friendship.

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WANDA JACKSON HAD BEEN MAKING RECORDS FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS WITHOUT EVER PUTTING AN ALBUM ON THE BILLBOARD 200. AT 73, JACK WHITE HELPED HER DO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME. By 2010, Wanda Jackson had already lived through the birth of rock and roll. She had toured with Elvis Presley, recorded “Let’s Have a Party,” and earned the name Queen of Rockabilly. Then Jack White came calling. Nearly 40 years younger than Wanda, the White Stripes frontman brought her into his Nashville studio and produced The Party Ain’t Over. He did not ask the 73-year-old to slow down. He surrounded that unmistakable growl with loud guitars, horns and a hard-driving band, pushing her back toward the rockabilly fire that had made her famous. Released in January 2011, the album reached No. 58 on the Billboard 200 — Wanda Jackson’s first album ever to make the chart. More than half a century after she started recording, a new generation finally found her. The album’s title could not have been more fitting. The party really wasn’t over.