Diane’s Country Music Newsletter – 3 August 2016
NEWS TG Sheppard reported on Facebook that last week’s “Stars Behind The Stars” benefit for the Dallas Police raised over $148,000. He posted this photo of himself and Randy Travis:
Entries by Diane Diekman
The Cavendon Luck
By Barbara Taylor Bradford The Cavendon Luck, which opens in 1938, rounds out the three-book Cavendon Hall series of Barbara Taylor Bradford novels. Cavendon Hall covered the Great War of 1914-18, and The Cavendon Women took place in the mid-1920s. The fictional Cavendon Hall in Yorkshire, England, is home to the aristocratic family of Lord Charles […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter — 20 July 2016
FEATURED ARTIST – FREDDIE HART “One of the greatest things that ever happened to me” was time in the Marine Corps, Freddie Hart told me when I called him several weeks ago. He was 14 when his parents signed the papers for him to enlist in 1942. He’d already spent a year in the Civilian […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter — 29 June 2016
NEWS Ralph Stanley (1927-2016) On June 23, Ralph Stanley, 89, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Coebun, Virginia. He had been suffering from skin cancer. Born and raised in southwest Virginia, Ralph and his brother Carter formed a group called the Stanley Brothers and their Clinch Mountain Boys. Carter died of liver […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter — 15 June 2016
NEWS Chips Moman (1937-2016) Lincoln Wayne “Chips” Moman, 79, died June 13 in his hometown of LaGrange, Georgia. He co-wrote “Luckenbach, Texas” and “The Wurlitzer Prize” (Waylon Jennings), “Hey Won’t You Play Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” (B.J. Thomas), and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” (Barbara Mandrell). He produced recordings for the Highwaymen, […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter — 1 June 2016
CORN PALACE CONCERT REVIEW Jeannie Seely, Johnny Lee, and Mickey Gilley performed in concert two weeks ago at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. It was most enjoyable to hear all that familiar classic country music. Jeannie opened the show with an energetic “My Window Faces the South” and followed with “Leaving and Saying […]
Memorial Day 2016
Below is the speech I gave on May 30, 2016, at American Legion Post 131 in Valley Springs, South Dakota. Welcome to today’s ceremony and thank you for being here. This is one of those few years when Memorial Day falls on both the traditional date of May 30th and the last Monday in May. […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter – 18 May 2016
SPECIAL PROMOTION – E-BOOK SALE The University of Illinois Press is running a special promotion that includes a sale on the e-book versions of Twentieth Century Drifter and Live Fast, Love Hard. NEWS Johnny Seay (1940-2016) Johnny Seay, 75, was killed Saturday afternoon, May 14, in a crop-dusting plane crash near West, Texas. His crop […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter – 4 May 2016
FEATURED ARTIST – BILL MACK “I’ll never, ever want to retire,” Bill Mack told me when I called him the other day. He was sitting in the studio he’d built in his Fort Worth, Texas, home in 2001 when he joined XM Satellite Radio. He’d spent three decades as the Midnight Cowboy on WBAP Radio […]
Diane’s Country Music Newsletter – 20 April 2016
NEWS Merle Haggard (1937-2016) Merle Haggard died at his Palo Cedro ranch in California on his 79th birthday, April 6. His youngest son, Ben Haggard, 23, posted on Facebook at 1:07 pm: “A week ago dad told us he was gonna pass on his birthday, and he wasn’t wrong. An hour ago he took his […]