Steve Wariner at the Nashville Chapter of the Recording Academy® Grammy Nominee party. Photo courtesy of The Recording Academy® 2009 & Rubin Media. Photograph by Rick Diamond/WireImage.com.

Four country acts that launched a series of hits in the 1980s and ‘90s — Steve Wariner, Patty Loveless, John Michael Montgomery and the late Keith Whitley — are set to enter the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame when it holds its next induction ceremony in April 2011 in Lexington.

They’ll be joined as new members by bluegrass duo the Goins Brothers; gospel singer Larnelle Harris; and Molly O’Day, a country vocalist who left a critically acclaimed body of work in a short five-year recording period in the late 1940s.

Robert Lawson, executive director of the Hall of Fame, called the new class “some of the most recognizable music artists in the world.”

Patty, Steve and John Michael continue to make relevant recordings. Each has released an album of new material in the last year that was greeted with some level of commercial success. Steve, in particular, won a Grammy award for “Producer’s Medley,” a track from an album that paid homage to his mentor, Chet Atkins.

Keith died in 1989 of alcohol poisoning just as he’d hit his stride as a hitmaker. He was honored in 1994 with Keith Whitley: A Tribute Album, featuring remakes of his music by such acts as Alison Krauss + Union Station, Alan Jackson, Joe Diffie and Diamond Rio. Campaigns bubble up on occasion to have Keith inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

The 2011 Kentucky Music Hall of Fame class is the fifth group of performers inducted into the Bluegrass State’s shrine. Among the previous inductees are Dwight Yoakam, Tom T. Hall, Crystal Gayle, Loretta Lynn, Bill Monroe, the Judds and the Everly Brothers.

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