On these cold, dark winter mornings, do you long for daylight to arrive? Think what it would be like if daylight saving time (DST) were in effect all year long. The sun wouldn’t be up until nine a.m. Our children would be heading to school in darkness. And we’d be commuting in the dark, navigating […]
NEWS The former Ernest Tubb Record Shop on Nashville’s Lower Broadway will become a bar and live music venue, reports Nashville Scene. To recap: David McCormick bought the record shop business and three-story building from ET’s family in 1992 for $128,000. He sold it for $4.75 million in 2020 to JesseLee Jones of the Brazilbilly […]
By Margaret Jones Possibly the most thorough Patsy Cline biography (I have three of them) came from Margaret Jones in 1994. I own the 1999 softcover edition of Patsy: The Life and Times of Patsy Cline. Faron Young was one of the interview sources, and I corresponded briefly with Jones while I was working on Faron’s […]
NEWS Toby Keith (1961-2024) Toby Keith, 62, died the evening of February 5, peacefully and surrounded by family. He had been battling stomach cancer for almost two years. He was born in Clinton, Oklahoma on July 8, 1961. MusicRow reports he got his first guitar when he was eight, and he formed the Easy Money […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – WILSON FAIRCHILD When Langdon Reid called me a week ago for our scheduled interview, his first question was, did we have any snow. I said we had a foot of snow, and the temperature was below zero. He told me they’d had an unexpected snowstorm in Staunton, Virginia, the previous night, […]
NEWS Vintage Guitar Magazine reports that rockabilly guitar great Larry Collins, 79, died January 5 at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital in Santa Clarita, California. He was 10 and his sister Lorrie was 12 when they joined the cast of Los Angeles television’s Town Hall Party as the Collins Kids in 1954. The Collins family had […]
By Alton Delmore The first time I remember hearing of the Delmore Brothers was when the Country Music Hall of Fame inducted them during its catch-up year of 2001. More recently, I mentioned them in my newsletter in 2022 as Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees in 1971. Alton and his youngest brother, Rabon, performed as […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – TONY JACKSON One of the performers at A Heroes & Friends Tribute to Randy Travis – 1 Night, 1 Place, 1 Time in Huntsville, Alabama, was Tony Jackson. He agreed when I asked to spotlight him in my newsletter, and I called him several weeks ago for a conversation. His latest […]
By Carrie Rodgers Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, died in 1933 at age 35, following years of suffering from tuberculosis. In 1935, his wife, Carrie, kept her promise to write his biography. She privately published My Husband, Jimmie Rodgers, which was republished by Ernest Tubb in 1953 and the Country Music Foundation Press in 1975 […]
This month, we especially honor the memories of Faron Young and Marty Robbins. Marty died December 8, 1982, at age 57. Faron died December 10, 1996, at age 64. IN THE SPOTLIGHT – THE TENNESSEE FOUR When Johnny Cash recorded “Hey Porter” in 1955 with Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on upright bass, […]