Country Music – Page 6 – Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

CLAY WALKER WAS 26, HAD ALREADY SCORED SIX NO. 1 COUNTRY HITS, AND HAD JUST BECOME A FATHER. THEN DOCTORS TOLD HIM HE COULD BE IN A WHEELCHAIR WITHIN YEARS By 1996, Clay Walker’s career was moving almost too quickly to slow down. The Texas singer had broken through with “What’s It to You” and “Live Until I Die,” then followed them with records including “Dreaming with My Eyes Open,” “If I Could Make a Living,” and “This Woman and This Man.” His first albums had gone platinum, his touring schedule was full, and his first daughter had recently been born. Then his vision split in two. Walker began experiencing numbness, facial spasms, weakness, and trouble controlling one side of his body. He initially feared a tumor. MRI scans revealed lesions on his brain, brain stem, and spinal cord. In April 1996, he was diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. He was 26. The prognosis was brutal. Walker later recalled being told that the number and location of the lesions could leave him in a wheelchair within a few years and might sharply shorten his life. At the time, he had only recently finished recording his fourth album. He began treatment, changed his diet, and kept working. The album Rumor Has It was released in 1997. Its title track became another No. 1 country hit, while “Watch This” and “Then What?” also reached the upper part of the chart. Most listeners heard the records without knowing what had been happening away from the stage. Walker continued touring through a disease known for its unpredictability. Some days brought weakness or problems with balance. Others allowed him to perform with the same energy audiences expected. Instead of building his public identity around the diagnosis, he tried to keep the illness from deciding when his career would end. In 2003, he founded Band Against MS to raise money for research and help other people living with the disease. Through benefit concerts, golf events, auctions, and other programs, the organization raised millions of dollars for MS-related causes. The diagnosis never disappeared. It remained behind every tour, recording session, medical scan, and physical setback. But the timeline doctors had described in 1996 did not arrive as predicted. Nearly three decades after the MRI revealed lesions across his central nervous system, Walker was still recording and walking onto country stages. The foundation created from that hospital diagnosis had also begun helping families whose names would never appear on a concert poster.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” CLAY WALKER HAD SIX NO. 1 HITS, A…

Country Music

CHRIS LEDOUX HAD ALREADY WON A WORLD RODEO TITLE AND RELEASED 22 ALBUMS ON HIS OWN. NASHVILLE DID NOT NOTICE UNTIL GARTH BROOKS PUT HIS NAME INSIDE A HIT SONG. He began competing as a teenager and eventually became one of the best bareback riders in the country. In 1976, after years of injuries, entry fees, overnight drives, and eight-second rides, LeDoux won the world bareback championship at the National Finals Rodeo. Music had started as a way to document that life. LeDoux wrote about the men, horses, highway miles, broken bones, cheap motel rooms, and small rodeo arenas he knew firsthand. He was not trying to create a cowboy image. He was singing about the job he went back to after the show. Nashville showed little interest. So LeDoux and his father created their own record company. He recorded the songs independently, carried the albums to rodeos, and built an audience one cowboy at a time. By 1989, he had released 22 independent albums, and the small family operation had generated millions of dollars without major-label support or regular country-radio play. Then an unknown Oklahoma singer recorded a song called “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old).” Near the end of the first verse, Garth Brooks sang about a worn-out rodeo man whose tape of Chris LeDoux had replaced the younger music he once played. The name lasted only seconds. But when the song became Brooks’ first country hit in 1989, listeners began asking who Chris LeDoux was. Nashville suddenly discovered that the cowboy mentioned in the lyric already had a large catalog and a loyal audience waiting beyond Music Row. Liberty Records signed him and brought his earlier recordings into its catalog. His first major-label album, Western Underground, arrived in 1991. A year later, LeDoux and Brooks recorded “Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy,” which reached the country Top 10. LeDoux never fully reshaped himself for Nashville. His concerts kept the speed and danger of rodeo in them. He ran across stages, rode mechanical bulls, and sang about cowboys without treating them as costumes. The radio success remained modest compared with Brooks’, but his touring audience grew because the people in those rooms believed the man singing the songs. In 2000, LeDoux underwent a liver transplant after developing a serious liver disease. He returned to performing, but was later diagnosed with cancer of the bile duct. He died in Casper, Wyoming, on March 9, 2005, at 56. Four months later, the ProRodeo Hall of Fame inducted him not as a country singer borrowing the West, but as the world champion bareback rider he had been before Nashville learned his name.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” CHRIS LEDOUX HAD ALREADY WON A WORLD RODEO…

Country Music

FARON YOUNG HAD SUNG “LIVE FAST, LOVE HARD, DIE YOUNG.” THEN ONE NIGHT, HE FIRED A GUN INTO HIS OWN KITCHEN CEILING AND HIS MARRIAGE BEGAN TO COME APART. Hilda Macon had been there before the legend got old. Faron met her while he was stationed at Fort McPherson in the early 1950s. She was the daughter of an Army master sergeant and came from country-music blood herself, with Uncle Dave Macon in the family line. They married in 1954, after Faron left the Army. Then came the children, the road, the records, and the years when Faron Young was one of the loudest men in Nashville. He was the “Young Sheriff.” He had No. 1 records. “Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young.” “Hello Walls.” “It’s Four in the Morning.” He helped build Music City News, backed writers, made stars laugh, made enemies mad, and filled rooms with the kind of personality that did not know how to stay small. But the house got the other part of him. By the 1980s, the drinking had become harder to manage. The hits were not coming the same way. On December 4, 1984, inside their Harbor Island home, Faron fired a pistol into the kitchen ceiling. Hilda wanted him to get help for his drinking. He refused. The marriage split after that. They separated, sold the house, and bought separate homes. At the divorce trial, when Faron was asked if he feared hurting someone by shooting holes into the ceiling, he answered, “Not whatsoever.” In 1987, after more than three decades together, the marriage was over. The public had known Faron Young as the man who could make honky-tonk sound cocky, bright, and dangerous. Hilda had heard the gun go off in the kitchen.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” FARON YOUNG MADE “LIVE FAST, LOVE HARD, DIE…

Country Music

BLACKHAWK WAS BUILT AROUND THREE VOICES. THEN CANCER TOOK ONE OF THEM — AND HIS LAST REQUEST WAS NOT TO LET THE BAND DIE WITH HIM. Before BlackHawk became one of the most recognizable harmony groups of 1990s country, its three members had already lived separate musical lives. Henry Paul had come out of the Southern rock band the Outlaws. Dave Robbins and Van Stephenson had spent years writing songs in Nashville, including material connected to Restless Heart. Stephenson had even made his own run at pop success, reaching the Top 30 in 1984 with “Modern Day Delilah.” By the early 1990s, Paul, Robbins, and Stephenson began writing and recording demos together. What separated them was not one dominant voice. It was the way all three voices locked together—Henry in front, Dave underneath, and Van carrying the high tenor that made the choruses sound larger than the three men standing at the microphones. Arista Nashville signed them in 1993. Their first single, “Goodbye Says It All,” reached the country Top 20. “Every Once in a While,” “I Sure Can Smell the Rain,” “That’s Just About Right,” and “There You Have It” followed. Their self-titled debut album eventually went double platinum. For several years, BlackHawk looked like one of the strongest new bands Nashville had built. Then, in early 1999, Van Stephenson was diagnosed with melanoma. He underwent treatment and surgery while the band’s future became increasingly uncertain. By February 2000, Stephenson stepped away from BlackHawk so he could continue fighting the disease and spend more time with his wife and three children. The loss was not simply a vacant position onstage. Van’s tenor had been part of the architecture of every BlackHawk harmony. Henry Paul and Dave Robbins could hire another musician, but they could not recreate the years of writing, recording, and learning how three particular voices breathed together. Stephenson understood that. He also understood what his absence might do to the two men left behind. Before his death, he asked Paul and Robbins to continue. His message was simple: there was still more music left in BlackHawk. Van Stephenson died at his Nashville home on April 8, 2001. He was 47. BlackHawk’s Greatest Hits album was dedicated to him and included “Ships of Heaven,” a final song connected to the man whose high harmony had helped define the band. Paul and Robbins then carried BlackHawk forward, not by pretending nothing had changed, but by accepting that it had changed permanently. They also established the Van Stephenson Memorial Cancer Research Fund, directing money toward cancer research at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Over the years, the band and its fans raised nearly a quarter of a million dollars in his name. BlackHawk continued touring. New voices entered the lineup. Henry Paul and Dave Robbins kept singing the old songs. But whenever those original recordings reach the chorus, Van Stephenson is still there—in the highest part of the harmony, holding a place no replacement was ever truly asked to erase.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” BLACKHAWK WAS BUILT AROUND THREE VOICES. THEN CANCER…

Country Music

CRAIG MORGAN WROTE A SONG ABOUT HIS DEAD SON AND DID NOT PLAN TO RELEASE IT. THEN RICKY SKAGGS HEARD IT AT THE OPRY AND TOLD HIM THE WORLD NEEDED TO HEAR IT. Jerry Greer was nineteen when the lake took him. On July 10, 2016, Craig Morgan’s son was tubing with friends on Kentucky Lake in Tennessee when the accident happened. He was wearing a life jacket. Search crews found his body the next day. Craig and his wife, Karen, buried their son on their Tennessee property near the family chapel. For three years, Craig carried it mostly inside the house. He had been a soldier before country music. He had sung “Almost Home,” “That’s What I Love About Sunday,” and “International Harvester.” His songs had always sounded like faith, work, family, and the kind of people who keep going because stopping is not an option. But losing Jerry was not a song he was trying to sell. Then “The Father, My Son, and the Holy Ghost” came out of him. Craig wrote it and sang it at the Grand Ole Opry. He thought it might stay there — one night, one room, one way to say something he could not say any other way. Ricky Skaggs heard it differently. He told Craig people needed to hear the song. So Craig recorded it. In 2019, the song was released without a big radio machine behind it. Then Blake Shelton heard it and started pushing people to buy it. Others followed. The song went to No. 1 on the iTunes all-genre chart. Craig Morgan did not turn Jerry into a single. He carried a song out of the Opry because another country singer told him not to leave it there.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” CRAIG MORGAN WROTE A SONG HE DID NOT…

Country Music

KEITH WHITLEY HAD BEEN DEAD FOR MORE THAN A YEAR WHEN LORRIE MORGAN WALKED INTO THE STUDIO TO SING WITH HIM ONE LAST TIME. The tape had been sitting there since 1987. Keith had recorded “’Til a Tear Becomes a Rose” as a demo. Ricky Skaggs was on the harmony part. At that point, Keith and Lorrie were still building a life together in Nashville. They married that November. Their son Jesse Keith was born the next year. Then the hits got bigger. “Don’t Close Your Eyes.” “When You Say Nothing at All.” “I’m No Stranger to the Rain.” On May 9, 1989, Keith Whitley died at his home in Goodlettsville. He was thirty-three. Afterward, RCA began putting together Greatest Hits. The old demo was still there. Keith’s lead vocal was still there. Ricky Skaggs’s harmony was still there. Lorrie replaced it with her own. She went into the studio and sang beside a voice that had already been gone for more than a year. The record came out in July 1990. Country radio took it to No. 13. That fall, “’Til a Tear Becomes a Rose” won CMA Vocal Event of the Year. The award had both their names on it. Keith Whitley was not there to accept it. Lorrie Morgan was.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” KEITH WHITLEY HAD BEEN GONE FOR MORE THAN…

Country Music

KEITH WHITLEY TOOK A BUS BACK TO NASHVILLE AFTER ANOTHER DRINKING BINGE. BY THE TIME HE GOT THERE, LORRIE MORGAN HAD LEFT THE HOUSE WITH THEIR BABY. Keith Whitley had already spent years making country music sound older than he was. He came out of bluegrass with Ricky Skaggs. He had sung through the Ralph Stanley years, the Kentucky bars, the long drives, and the kind of drinking that kept following him even after Nashville started paying attention. By 1988, “Don’t Close Your Eyes” and “When You Say Nothing at All” had made him one of the biggest voices in country music. He was married to Lorrie Morgan. They had a baby son, Jesse Keith. The records were working. The house was supposed to be the safe part. But the drinking kept coming back. Lorrie tried to manage it. Friends tried to manage it. Keith went through treatment. He stopped for stretches. Then the road, the pressure, and the bottles found their way back into the room. One time, after another run of drinking, Keith came home and found the house empty. Lorrie had taken Jesse and left. There was no headline. No television interview. Just a country singer at the top of the charts walking through his own house and realizing his wife had taken their son somewhere he could not reach. Keith kept recording. In 1989, “I’m No Stranger to the Rain” became another No. 1. The song was about a man who knew storms were coming and kept moving anyway. On May 9, 1989, Keith Whitley was found dead at his home in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. He was thirty-three. By then, the house had filled back up with people. But the bottles were still there.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” KEITH WHITLEY CAME BACK FROM ANOTHER DRINKING BINGE…

Country Music

MARK COLLIE SPENT YEARS VISITING A TENNESSEE PRISON BEFORE HE EVER BROUGHT A BAND INSIDE. THEN HE WALKED ONSTAGE AT BRUSHY MOUNTAIN AND OPENED WITH: “HELLO, I’M MARK COLLIE.” By 2001, Mark Collie had already been through the Nashville part of the story. He had made records for MCA and Giant. He had written songs for Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, and George Jones. He had the voice, the rockabilly edge, and enough country-radio history to keep playing the regular rooms. But he had started spending time at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee. Not for a photo. Not for one afternoon with cameras. He went in before the concert, sat with inmates, listened to their stories, and worked on songs with some of them. Brushy Mountain was not a symbolic place. It was a real prison built in the mountains north of Knoxville, with a history that went back more than a century. Then Collie brought in a band. In October 2001, he played a concert inside Brushy Mountain with Dave Grissom, Willie Weeks, Sean Camp, Kelly Willis, and Gatemouth Brown. The songs were about prison, bad choices, death row, and men trying to figure out what was left after they had already ruined most of their lives. Collie walked out and introduced himself with a line that everybody in the room understood. “Hello, I’m Mark Collie.” It was his answer to Johnny Cash. Cash had walked into Folsom Prison in 1968 and said, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.” Merle Haggard had once been an inmate when Cash performed at San Quentin. Collie knew both men. He had heard Merle talk about what that first prison show meant. But this was not Folsom. And Mark Collie was not Johnny Cash. The concert was recorded. Then the tapes disappeared into industry limbo. The footage sat underwater for two weeks during the Nashville flood before Collie and his wife recovered and restored it. The album and documentary did not finally come out until years later. The prison show did not make Mark Collie a bigger star. It gave him a room full of men who had nowhere to go after the last song.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” MARK COLLIE WALKED INTO A TENNESSEE PRISON WITH…

Country Music

RODNEY ATKINS DID NOT MEET THE WOMAN WHO GAVE HIM UP UNTIL HE WAS ALMOST FORTY. WHEN THEY FINALLY SAT DOWN TOGETHER, SHE KEPT SAYING SHE WAS SORRY. HE KEPT SAYING THANK YOU. Rodney Atkins was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1969. His birth mother was nineteen, scared, and hiding the pregnancy from her family. She placed him for adoption. Rodney was eventually adopted by Allan and Margaret Atkins and raised around Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, where he grew up doing chores, playing ball, learning guitar, and singing at local fairs. By the time country radio knew him, he had built a career on songs about ordinary people trying to hold onto something. “If You’re Going Through Hell” went to No. 1. “Watching You” did too. He sang about fathers, sons, back roads, small towns, and the things people carry without saying much about them. But he did not know why his own mother had let him go. In 2008, Rodney went through the proper channels and arranged to meet her in Nashville. She had spent nearly four decades carrying the secret. Her family had not known. Even her younger son did not know he had an older brother until the truth finally came out. When they met, she kept apologizing. Rodney told her he was grateful. He told her she had given him a life. Then he met the brother who had never known he existed, and the grandmother who had never been told she had another grandson. After the meeting, Rodney went back to the road. But now there was a woman in Nashville who knew where he had been all those years. And a younger brother who had just learned he had one.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” RODNEY ATKINS DID NOT MEET THE WOMAN WHO…

Country Music

THE SURGERY TOOK CHARLIE ROBISON’S VOICE. FOUR YEARS LATER, HE WALKED BACK INTO BILLY BOB’S TEXAS AND SANG AGAIN. Charlie Robison came out of Bandera, Texas, where his family had worked ranch land for generations and Saturday night meant the dancehall. He played Austin bars, made Bandera in 1996, then built a following on the Texas circuit with records like Life of the Party, Step Right Up, and “I Want You Bad.” He never sounded built for Nashville polish. He sounded like a man who had brought Hill Country dust into the studio. By 2018, he had been doing it for more than two decades. Then, on January 3, he underwent surgery on his throat. The procedure was meant to deal with medical problems that had been bothering him. Complications followed. For months, Robison disappeared from the road. Then, on September 24, he wrote to fans himself. The surgery, he said, had left him with the permanent inability to sing. He was retiring from the stage and studio. No farewell run. No final hometown show. One of the men who had spent twenty-five years singing Texas bars, dance halls, and festival stages was suddenly finished because his own voice would not come back. Charlie Robison did return to the stage in 2022 after the damage proved less permanent than first believed. But the break had already happened. The singer who had once made a career out of sounding loose and unbreakable had spent four years waiting to find out whether he could still open his mouth and make a song.

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“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.” THE SURGERY TOOK CHARLIE ROBISON’S VOICE. FOUR YEARS…

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