Diane’s Country Music Newsletter — 15 April 2026
NEWS
On March 29, Ray Stevens fell and broke his neck. He was briefly hospitalized and is now recovering at home. According to a press release, he will wear a neck brace for the next month, and he “remains fully mobile and in good spirits as he continues his recovery.” Get-well wishes can be sent to: Ray Stevens, 5724 River Rd, Nashville TN 37209
Grammy-nominated Christian and country artist Anne Wilson sang the national anthem at NASA’s Artemis II launch on April 1–NASA’s first crewed lunar mission in more than half a century. Country Now reports that she stood near the site of the space launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, wearing a “stunning black off-the-shoulder gown with silver sequins” that sparkled in the sunlight. Anne grew up in Kentucky with the dream of becoming an astronaut. Her aspirations of going into space changed at age fifteen after her brother, Jacob, died in a car crash. She sang publicly for the first time at his funeral. The video clip of her rendition of “What A Beautiful Name” went viral and laid the foundation for her music career.
To celebrate the release of his new memoir, Killin’ Time: My Life and Music, Clint Black has incorporated a book tour into his Back on the Black Top Tour. According to MusicRow, the five-city book tour will take place May 17–23 with stops in New York City, Long Island, Boston, Pittsburgh, and Nashville, and will include appearances on NBC TODAY on May 18 and The Kelly Clarkson Show on May 22. Details of his upcoming can be found at https://www.clintblack.com/tour.
WKRN News 2 in Nashville reports the public affairs officer of the 101st Airborne Division as saying, “Fort Campbell leadership is aware of a video circulating on social media depicting AH-64 Apache helicopters operating in the vicinity of a private residence associated with Mr. Robert Ritchie (also known as “Kid Rock”). The command has initiated an investigation to review the circumstances surrounding this activity.” When WKRN asked for a response, Kid Rock said, “I think they’re gonna be all right. My buddy is Commander-In-Chief. I mean, what are they looking into? They stopped seconds … a minute?” He told Country Now that helicopters often fly over his home, which he calls the “Southern White House,” on their way to Nissan Stadium for football games and he always makes a point to go outside to see them. “It was pretty cool they stopped right there,” he said of the Saturday happening. “I wasn’t expecting any of that, but I thought it was pretty neat.”
Country traditionalist Alex Miller has released his fourth album, More Country Than You, on Billy Jam Records, produced by Jerry Salley. According to a press release, his highest-charting single is “Secondhand Smoke,” written by Alan Jackson and Jim McBride. Alex kicks off his 17-city spring tour this week. No appearances yet in South Dakota.
Gram Parsons is one of five performers being inducted posthumously into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the Early Influence category, reports MusicRow. Eighteen inductees will enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, during an induction ceremony in Los Angeles on November 14. Born Ingram Cecil Connor III in Winter Haven, Florida, Gram first gained recognition with the International Submarine Band before joining The Byrds and then co-founding the Flying Burrito Brothers. He died at age 26 in 1973.
“Out Last Night,” the Kenny Chesney song that spent two weeks at number one in 2009, has a new surge of popularity. PEOPLE reports the song can be heard in the background of a TikTok video posted March 29. Mikala West and her friend visited a bar in Huntsville, Alabama, following the 2026 lineman’s rodeo (an annual event where linemen from across the country compete to show off their skills). The friend hit it off with one of the linemen, and West posted on TikTok a video of the two of them to track him down. The caption read, “My friend found her soulmate last night in Huntsville Alabama after the lineman rodeo and we know nothing about him except his name is Mike and his friends kept calling him like the birds in Finding Nemo. (Mike! Mike! Mike!) Help us get Nemo home.” While many TikTok users added their comments to the story, one wrote: “Hi! I’m Michael’s wife. He’s busy explaining this to our two children right now.” The number of searches for the song increased by 400%, and over 25 million people have seen the original video. Kenny Chesney posted on TikTok, “Heard we went out last night.”
The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s “Nashville Cats” interview series will feature vocalist Wendy Moten on May 16 in the museum’s Ford Theater. MusicRow reports that the series spotlights renowned musicians and session singers who have played important support roles in either the recording studio or on concert tours. Wendy grew up in Memphis, singing in church and in Overton High School’s competition choir. She was a backup singer with Julio Iglesias for 15 years, then for Faith Hill, Martina McBride, and Tim McGraw, as well as a featured singer on Vince Gill’s tours. Her voice can be heard on recordings by Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, and many others. On NBC’s The Voice, she was chosen by coach Blake Shelton and finished the season as the runner-up.
LETTERS
Joseph Allen says, “I knew the name Lee Shannon from somewhere. Turns out he was a DJ at WIRE am radio station in Indianapolis from 1968-1980. That was one of my favorite stations until WFMS started broadcasting country music on the FM dial in October 1976. He lived to a long age, and I pass my condolences on his death.”
Rosemary Eng writes from Whiting, New Jersey, “Great newsletter, as usual. Really appreciate all the time you put into it. Just want to say I remember Lee Arnold very well from NY radio…met him at several different functions back then. I will be waiting to read about him.”
Doug Lippert in Carmel, Indiana, says, “A little bell went off when I read your piece about Chip Taylor’s passing. Marilee Rush had the first hit with ‘Angel of the Morning’ in the late ‘60s, if I recall correctly. Although I’ll admit to having both hers and Juice’s versions on my Spotify playlist. And how interesting is it that the same songwriter wrote two such different songs as ‘Wild Thing’ and ‘Angel of the Morning.’ Always a great day when your newsletter arrives in my inbox.”
Diane Jordan writes, “I’m happy to report the Ray Stevens album Favorites Old & New will be released Friday, April 10. Cut #11 is ‘Moving Out Is Easier Than Moving On.’ Writers are Diane Jordan Fullam & Russell Robertson. Russ and I are very excited. It’s been a long time coming.”
Jack McCarty asks, “Do you still do your classic country newsletter? If so, how do I sign up?”
Jeff Chandler, former member of the Marty Robbins Band, says, “You serve such a purpose which no one even knows. You keep alive the flame of music and memories which, without a gatekeeper, would be gone. As a picker and singer, I salute your efforts. We do this because we love it. And we love you for your chronicling of our efforts. You are a treasure.”
Bobby Fischer writes from Nashville, “Your newsletter means a lot to a lot of us. It’s a musical gift. Thanks for including me. Helen and me almost left the world yesterday. Driving along slow, then bam, rear ended. Both in the hospital all night. At three a.m. they said all clear. I have back pain but not like it could have been. Never know what’s around the corner, do you? Be safe.”
Tom Barton says, “As always, you do a fine job with the newsletter, and I love keeping up with many of the personalities in country music. I may have overlooked it, but are you aware that Marty Robbins’ music catalog was acquired by Anthem Music Publishing last summer? I just wonder what this might mean for us Marty fans in the future… For instance, is there any chance they could release previously unreleased material, such as outtakes from making Gunfighter Ballads? I have always been fascinated with how that album was made. Can you get any more information?”
Diane: Here’s what I wrote in June—”Anthem Music Publishing has acquired a catalog of Marty Robbins songs, including ‘Big Iron,’ ‘El Paso,’ and ‘My Woman, My Woman, My Wife.’ The Marty Robbins Estate says, “We’re confident that Anthem will not only preserve Marty’s legacy but elevate it—introducing his work to new audiences while honoring the timeless spirit of the originals.” I haven’t heard anything about it since then. As for Gunfighter Ballads, there were no outtakes. Twelve songs were recorded on the April 7, 1959, session and those twelve songs are on the album.
Don Holland, Master chief petty officer, U.S. Navy retired, writes, “Hey, Captain, thank you for your wonderful newsletters. I sincerely believe you belong in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Also, my mates down in Australia have educated me to the fact that Slim Dusty should be in the Hall of Fame. Which brings up the question, does one have. to be a U.S. citizen to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame? Russell Turner in Nagambia, Victoria, Australia, his brother Peter, and I all agree Slim certainly deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Could you ask your readers for their opinion please?”
Diane: I have the Slim Dusty CD I purchased during a visit to Australia 35 years ago. Readers, what say you?
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Before my 2009 telephone interview with Robert Hinkle to talk about Marty Robbins, I purchased and read his newly released autobiography, Call Me Lucky: A Texan in Hollywood. Bob was Marty’s manager from 1968 until Marty’s death in 1982. He produced two of Marty’s movies, Country Music and Guns of a Stranger, and they did Marty’s TV show, The Drifter. Bob was a West Texas rodeo cowboy when he met a movie producer who invited him in 1952 to come to Hollywood. That began his 50-year career as speech coach, actor, producer, director, and friend to the stars. He first met Marty in Kanab, Utah, in 1957, on the movie set of The Badge of Marshal Brennan. Bob’s country-boy personality came across to me in such quotes as, “I was happier than a gopher in soft dirt.” He died at age 95 on March 3, 2026, in hospice care in Austin, Texas, after a fall in his driveway.
When Marty Landau died in 1968–Marty Landau was his booker. He didn’t really have a personal manager. I never was his booker. He had Bobby Sykes book him after Landau died. I handled his TV appearances, motion pictures, and things like that. and negotiated his contract when he went from Columbia to MCA and then when he went back to Columbia. All Bobby did was take calls. People would call in and want to book Marty, and he’d look on the book to see if he was available. And if he was, he’d ask Marty, do you want to go to Spokane for three days, and Marty would say yes, and then he’d book it. That’s the way it worked. You didn’t have to drum up business for Marty. He turned down more jobs than he took. When I started with Marty, he was making $1,500 a night. He was getting $10,000 when he died. I managed him for 14 years, and he died in 1982.
Marty called me on New Year’s Eve in 1971, and he says I’ve got an idea for a movie. Come on down tomorrow. Get on a plane and come on down. I want to do this movie, and I want to do it right away. When I got down there, he said, “I want to do a country music movie. What can we do? Give me some ideas.” He was a good friend of Sammy Jackson, who was a big disc jockey on KLAC in Los Angeles. I said, “Marty, why don’t we do a movie with Sammy Jackson? He can act, and he’s a good disc jockey, got a good voice. We’ll have him follow you around, doing a story–that’ll be our movie. This guy going with you will give us an excuse for you to go to a race, and give you an excuse to be in Los Angeles, and give you an excuse to go by and see Bill Mack.” He said, okay, let’s do it. We got all the people together. I just stayed down in Nashville. I went down there and put this together in about two weeks. It starts off with Marty going on a tour, and we go out to Vegas, and it shows Marty playing on the stage, and then it shows him going out to a race in Pomona. Then he’s got to go back to the Grand Ole Opry, and we fly down and stop off in Fort Worth, and we see Bill Mack and did a segment there with him, and then went on down and did the Grand Ole Opry. About 30-45 minutes of the movie is at the Grand Ole Opry, where Hal Durham says, “The Grand Ole Opry proudly presents Marty Robbins.” And then Marty comes on and does all his little thing. It was raining and that old Ryman auditorium was full. Marty was on last, so we shot Marty’s show, and then I went back and did all the inserts and cutaways and different things that we needed to do, after the Grand Ole Opry was over. The audience stayed in there until we finished at two o’clock in the morning. From 11:30 to 12 is when he was on the air.
Right after that he said he’d like to do a series of singing westerns like Gene Autry did. His contract was up at Columbia, and he was fussing with them, so I said, “Let me call Universal, and I’ll call MCA, and see if I can get us a deal out there so we can do some movies. Two movies a year for three years, and then you go on the label and cut albums for them.” He said okay. I called Mike Maitlin out at Universal, and Mike said yes immediately. He sent a man out to Vegas to sit down and go over the contracts with us, and that’s the way Guns of a Stranger came about. It was called The Drifter, but Clint Eastwood had a thing called something Drifter, and they asked us if we would change it. Since Clint was a good friend, we didn’t want to hurt his movie, and we didn’t figure Guns of a Stranger was going to be a blockbuster. We just figured it would be entertaining, and get our money back, which it did. MCA didn’t promote his albums. He made one or two albums for them–Twentieth Century Drifter and something else. Anyway, they didn’t go over too good. MCA and Universal, they’re the same outfit. The movie didn’t do the business we thought it was going to do. We thought it would be in all the drive-ins, and Universal just put it out there. Movies needed a big name in them to get booked all over. It wasn’t making the money we thought, so Marty said, “I don’t think that’s too good an idea, Bob, to do Gene Autry westerns.” He said, “See if you can get me out of my contract with MCA.” MCA was losing money, so I asked about getting out of the contract, and then I had them give Marty all of his masters, as part of the deal to get out of the contract. I got him all of his MCA masters. So MCA never could release anything after that.
Probably 1965, in that era, Marty wanted to do a TV show called The Drifter. I went down to Nashville, and we went to the local TV station to do it. It was black and white; they didn’t have color yet. We shot 13 deals altogether called The Drifter. It was aired just in Nashville, I think. Marty financed those, and it seems like he only had $5,000 in each one of them. I wrote a script, and Bobby Sykes wrote a script, and Buddy Mize wrote a script, a lot of his friends. They were 30-minute shows. The one I wrote, we had Tex Ritter in it. Marty rides in, Tex Ritter has a little general store, Marty comes in to buy some stuff, and asks him, “Whose guitar is that?” He says, “Mine. Do you play?” He said yeah. Tex says, “Sing us a song while I fill this order for you.” Bobby Sykes and Don Winters just happen to be sitting over there playing cards, so Marty says, “You guys help me out on this.” And they sang. They said, “Well, Drifter, we wish you’d stay.” He said, no, I got to go on, and he thanked them, and he’s gone, and that’s the end of the show. They were simple shows. That never did go, because it was black and white, at the time color was coming in. Eddie Fox was trying to sell The Drifter. Eddie was Marty’s manager at the time; this was before I was the manager. That’s when I was just a friend of Marty’s. And since I was in the picture business, and I was producing, I just kind of helped them out a little.
Do you want to hear some more about his temper? One time when we was shooting Guns of a Stranger out in Apacheland, right out of Phoenix, there was a guy come on the set. We thought he was working extra, he was dressed up with old western stuff on, and he come on the set, and he’d been drinking, and he give Marty a little shit about something, I don’t remember what it was over, but Marty knocked the hell out of him. I stopped the fight, and I told one of the stuntmen to take this guy out to the gate. Marty threw his arm out when he hit him and was sore for a week. And it was the time we were doing the fight scenes. But Marty would hit guys in a wrath.
I was with him the night he got his Grammy. This is a story that hasn’t been told. They’d rehearsed, and they were giving out the awards, and they hadn’t come down to his yet, and he said, “Bob, let’s duck out of here. If we get out of here now, I can catch the midnight flight out of here going to Nashville. We can just go right to the airport.” So we started sneaking out. The light went down, we left our table and snuck over there, and we was getting ready to go through the kitchen, and the lights come up right on Marty’s table, and they introduced Marty. He had won. They were searching around, and I got Marty and I’m leading him back up there, and he goes up there and accepts the Grammy. If they’d been a minute later, we’d have been out the back door. That was at the Palladium in Los Angeles. That guy emceeing was Andy Williams.
They had a little controversy on that show when they was taping it earlier in the day. Some of the songs they taped earlier, because they didn’t want to have somebody make a mistake in the middle of a live show. They gave Marty about five minutes on his song. They gave Charley Pride about two minutes. That pissed Marty off, and he says, just give me two minutes also. Oh, no, no, Marty–they already knew he was going to win. You gotta do the whole thing. He said give Charley Pride time for his entire song then. And they did.
Marty had a Dr Ure was his name there in Nashville. Marty had a hard time sleeping, and so Marty talked him into giving him thirty pills, just to use when he couldn’t sleep. Well, Marty got to abusing them, and kept that bottle, and then he’d just–you could buy those Valiums from the guys that sold dope. As long as you didn’t have but 15 or 20 Valiums in that bottle, if the police arrested you, they would never say anything, because you had a prescription for it. It didn’t matter how old the pills were. That’s how Cash and Roger Miller and them got away with it. They kept a bottle with less than the amount it said on the bottle. They were always legal then. You could buy them illegal, almost by the hundreds, if you wanted to.
Marty used to take those Valiums about 45 minutes before he went on. I’ve had two or three people tell me, “I saw Marty and he was so drunk, he couldn’t hardly walk on the stage.” Well, it was those pills, they made him about half drunk. They made him high before he went to sleep. When he’d take those pills, his high would last about an hour. When I was with him, he’d say what time is it–because he never wore a watch–and 45 minutes before he went on the stage, he’d take that pill with some black coffee. And boy, when he hit that stage, he was really getting the full feeling. That started in 1982. He’d just got on them, and he just–it was bothering him. He told me, “Bob, I can’t sleep without taking them damn things. Even when I’m not on the stage, I have to take them, and I’m addicted to them. I want off of them.” So I rented an apartment out there, and he was going to come out there and stay for thirty days and kick the habit. Just sweat it out, cuz he said that’s what he’d have to do. He realized he was taking too many of them and he wanted to get off of them. He got on them on his own and he was gonna get off them on his own.
Even before I became his manager, I used to go to Nashville and hang out with him, y’know, because we were friends. I guess that’s why he wanted me to manage him. I said, well, Marty, I never have managed anybody. He said you just do what I tell you to do. If I don’t want to do a show, I’ll tell you no, and they can hate you for it instead of me.
COUNTRY MUSIC DISC JOCKEY HALL OF FAME – 1999 (first half)
Pennsylvania native Julie Marlene Bendra, born in 1924, is known as Rosalie Allen, “The Queen of The Yodelers.” After winning a talent contest and joining a Pennsylvania radio station, she became one of the earliest female disc jockeys in 1944, when men were being drafted to serve in World War II. As the first female Country music disc jockey in New York City, she hosted the Prairie Stars radio show six nights a week on WOV. She also signed with RCA Records and hit the top ten with “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart” and “Guitar Polka.” Her weekly NBC-TV show, The Village Barn, ran from 1948-1952. She hosted a nationally distributed radio show for the NBC Radio Network and international show for the Armed Forces Radio Network from 1949-1954. When her Prairie Stars show ended in 1956, she left the music business to raise her daughter, except for a few special appearances. She later worked as a cook for Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker when her son-in-law was their security guard. She died of congestive heart failure in 2003, at age 79, in Van Nuys, California.
At age 91, Ted Cramer–who can be found on Facebook and LinkedIn–still interacts with WGGE FM Froggy in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Born in 1934, the Kansas City, Missouri, native spent most of his career in his hometown market, beginning with KIMO Radio in Independence and KFEQ AM/TV in St Joseph. In 1958 he brought KCKN Radio in Overland Park, Kansas, back to Country, pioneering the “Countrypolitan” format. Over the years, he turned various stations to the country format, serving as program director in Parkersburg WV, Cincinnati OH, Miami FL, Columbus OH, Chicago IL Oklahoma City OK, and WSM in Nashville TN. He always returned to Kansas City, until recently when he and his wife settled in Parkersburg.
Known as one of Alabama’s premiere radio personalities, Joe Rumore—born in Birmingham in 1920—began his radio career at WJLD in Bessemer. He then worked at WAPI Birmingham until WVOK, also in Birmingham, lured him away from WAPI in 1948. WVOK, the Mighty 690 with 50,000 watts of power, reached north/central Alabama and parts of Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. For most of his career, Joe had a studio in his home; he broadcast from his basement and made his family part of the show. An independent contractor, he bought the time from WVOK and sold his own advertising. He played a variety of music, ranging from Ray Price to Tony Bennett. He retired from radio in 1982 and died in 1993, at age 73, following bypass surgery.