IN THE SPOTLIGHT – DOYLE GRISHAM Steel guitarist Doyle Grisham grew up wanting to be the next Carl Smith. Instead, after a long career as a musician, he is now a Coral Reefer with Jimmy Buffet. When I called him the other day, they had just returned from a two-week tour. At age eighty, he […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – JAMES DUPRÉ Tickets go on sale today, June 1, for The Music of Randy Travis Concert at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. The show takes place Sunday afternoon, August 28, at 2 pm, to conclude the annual Corn Palace Festival. James Dupré will be singing Randy’s songs, backed by […]
CONCERT REVIEW – GENE WATSON Gene Watson finally gave his concert at the Sisseton Performing Arts Center. He told us the May 7 show had taken so long to happen he didn’t think they would ever do it. It was two years in the making. “We drove all the way up here from Texas,” he […]
Happy birthday to Randy Travis. He celebrates his 63rd birthday today. NEWS Naomi Judd (1946-2022) One day before being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, Naomi Judd, 76, died on April 30. “Today we sisters experienced a tragedy,” daughters Wynonna and Ashley Judd said in a statement. “We lost our beautiful mother to […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – T. GRAHAM BROWN When the 90s Country Rewind Tour comes to Sioux Falls on June 25, I will be in the front row at the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance to welcome T. Graham Brown, Doug Stone, and Terry McBride. I recently spoke on the phone with T. Graham Brown. He […]
By Hank Snow, with Jack Ownbey and Bob Burris One of the famous singers from my youth who seems to be forgotten today is Hank Snow. I don’t hear his name mentioned or his songs played on classic country stations. He was Mom’s favorite singer. I can remember her singing “Let me go, let me […]
NEWS C.W. McCall (1928-2022) William Dale Fries Jr. (pronounced “freeze”), 93, an advertising executive who became C.W. McCall, died April 1 at his home in Ouray, Colo. He had announced in February that he was in home hospice for cancer. The Washington Post reports he was born Billie Dale Fries on November 15, 1928, in […]
CONCERT REVIEW – REBA McENTIRE The first time I saw Reba McEntire in concert was in her early cowgirl days, in Oklahoma in the late 1970s. A decade later, when she gave a concert in Virginia, she had gone uptown. Her fancy gowns and choreographed movements made it appear she’d practiced posing on a certain […]
IN THE SPOTLIGHT – SCOTTY McCREERY After reading an article where Scotty McCreery said, “Little Scotty used to sit on the end of his bed with a guitar playing three wooden crosses, forever and ever amen, 1982, diggin’ up bones and so many other Randy Travis songs till 2 in the morning,” I knew I […]
By Brenda Lee with Robert Oermann and Julie Clay When Brenda Lee published her autobiography in 2002, I purchased a copy to use as source material for my Faron Young biography. Little Miss Dynamite: The Life and Times of Brenda Lee was co-written with Robert Oermann and Julie Clay. Her first-person story is interspersed throughout […]