Porter Wagoner holds his first RCA recording session, at KWTO Radio in Springfield, Missouri IN 1952. That project began with a cover of Hank Williams’ “Settin’ The Woods On Fire”
Decca releases Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough” album in 1966. It was her 7th studio album and would become her first #1 album on the Billboard Hot Country Albums Chart.
We lost Red Foley on Sep 19, 1968 after he had a heart attack in a hotel room in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Foley was the grandfather to Debby Boone and was a steady country hitmaker from 1944-1956, earning membership in the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1967. His last song is a gospel title, “(There’ll Be) Peace In The Valley (For Me)”
Ray Price achieves a #1 Billboard country single with “For The Good Times,” written by Kris Kristofferson in 1970. It would be Price’s first chart topping hit in more than a decade and would make Kristofferson one of the hottest songwriters in Nashville.
Gram Parsons dies at Joshua Tree, CA in 1973, of an accidental chemical overdose. A former member of The Byrds, one of country-rock’s seminal acts, Parsons influenced Emmylou Harris to take up country music.
The Louise Mandrell Theater opens in Pigeon Forge in 1997.
In 1998, Eddie Rabbitt, Kent Robbins (“Straight Tequila Night”) and Merle Kilgore (“Ring Of Fire”) are inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame during ceremonies at the Loews Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel in Nashville.
The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inducts Tommy Collins (“The Roots Of My Raising”), Wayne Kemp (“The Fireman”), Glenn Sutton (“Almost Persuaded”) and A.L. “Doodle” Owens (“Wine Colored Roses”) in 1999.
We lost Skeeter Davis to cancer in 2004. A longtime member of the Grand Ole Opry, she racked up more than 15 hit records but is best remembered for her 1962 recording “The End Of The World”
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
The Righteous Brothers’ Bill Medley is born in Santa Ana, California in 1940. The duo’s “Unchained Melody” is covered as a country hit by Elvis Presley, while The Oak Ridge Boys remake their hit “Dream On.” Medley has a brief country solo career, nominated for top new male vocalist by the Academy of Country Music in 1985.
Austin Roberts is born in Newport News, VA in 1945. After recording the pop hit “Rocky,” Roberts finds success as a Nashville songwriter, penning Lee Greenwood’s “I.O.U.,” Earl Thomas Conley’s “Honor Bound” and Reba McEntire’s “You Lie”
Trisha Yearwood is born in Monticello, GA in 1964. A powerful vocalist in the vein of her idol Linda Ronstadt, she wins a Grammy for her 1997 recording of “How Do I Live” and becomes one of the most revered country acts of the 1990s.
