Webb Pierce collects a #1 country single in Billboard with a very controversial song, There Stands The Glass in 1953. Many radio stations refused to play it because they feared it glorified drinking.
In a 1955 deal engineered by Colonel Tom Parker, RCA Records bought Elvis Presley’s contract and master tapes from Sam Phillips’ Sun Records for $35,000.
Tom T. Hall recorded Faster Horses (The Cowboy And The Poet) at the US Recording Studio in Nashville in 1975.
Elektra/Asylum released the soundtrack to the Clint Eastwood movie Every Which Way But Loose in 1978. Included: Mel Tillis’ Coca Cola Cowboy and Send Me Down To Tucson, Eddie Rabbitt’s title cut and music from Charlie Rich, Carol Chase, Hank Thompson, Larry Collins and Phil Everly.
“Who shot J.R.?” That question was answered on Dallas in 1980. SPOILER ALERT: It was Kristin–pregnant with J.R. Ewing’s child–who pulled the trigger. The show helped key an early-’80s country boom, generally regarded as the Urban Cowboy era.
Hank Williams Jr.’s All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down) settled in at #1 on the Billboard country chart in 1981.
Conway Twitty recorded Somebody’s Needin’ Somebody in an evening session at Nashville’s Sound Stage in 1983.
Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger album goes platinum and double-platinum on the same day in 1986.
That same day in 1986, Marty Robbins’ Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs scored a platinum album.
Conway Twitty recorded Crazy In Love and I Couldn’t See You Leavin’ at the Emerald Sound Studios in Nashville in 1989.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Hal Smith was born in Fairview, AL in 1923. A fiddler for Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb and others, he eventually joined Ray Price to found Pamper Music, a publishing company that provided a songwriting springboard for Willie Nelson, Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran.
Jean Shepard was born in Oklahoma in 1933. Hits such as Second Fiddle (To An Old Guitar), A Satisfied Mind and a Ferlin Husky duet, A Dear John Letter, earned her membership in the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame.
