The last day of October is more than just an excuse to put on a funny costume. As it turns out, the date has been quite an important one for country music. Here’s a list of some notable events that happened on Halloween, courtesy of RolandNote.com, the ultimate country music database! For more country music and Halloween, check out our Halloween section with pumpkin carving templates, fright night memories from the stars and more!

Oct 31, 1912 – Dale Evans born in Uvalde, Texas. In December 1947, she marries Roy Rogers, with whom she stars on radio and TV. She also writes their classic closing theme “Happy Trails”

Oct 31, 1921—Malissa Monroe dies at the family home near Rosine, Kentucky. No one bothers to tell her son, 10-year-old Bill Monroe, that she’s dead until after she’s already been buried

Oct 31, 1931 – Lester Flatt marries Gladys Stacy at the courthouse in Cookeville, Tennessee

Oct 31, 1934 – At a Halloween party in Halifax, Hank Snow meets his future wife, Minnie Aalders

Oct 31, 1947 — Promoter Connie B. Gay books Eddy Arnold for the first-ever country show at Washington, D.C.’s Constitution Hall. Also on the bill are comedians Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield

Oct 31, 1952 – Hank Williams checks into a Shreveport hospital with acute intoxication

Oct 31, 1954 – When Eddy Arnold plays Memphis’ Ellis Auditorium, a young Elvis Presley finds his way backstage. Presley meets Arnold and The Jordanaires, and spots–though he does not talk to–Colonel Tom Parker

Oct 31, 1960 – Elvis Presley records “Crying In The Chapel” at Nashville’s RCA Studio B. The single goes unreleased, however, for more than four years

Oct 31, 1964 – Darryl Worley born in Savannah, Tennessee. Noted for the strong traditional influence on his music, the lanky singer builds a solid career after his 2000 debut, striking a major chord for patriotism with his 2003 release “Have You Forgotten?”

Oct 31, 1966 – Decca releases Loretta Lynn‘s “Don’t Come Home A’Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)”

Oct 31, 1974 – Emmylou Harris records “If I Could Only Win Your Love” and her first single, “Too Far Gone”

Oct 31, 1983 – Lee Greenwood tapes the syndicated “Solid Gold” in Los Angeles, then visits the home of MCA chairman Irving Azoff to present him a tape of “God Bless The U.S.A.”

Oct 31, 1987 – Dolly Parton opens a restaurant in Honolulu, the Dockside Plantation

Oct 31, 1991 – Randy Travis accepts a unique Halloween treat: a gold album for “High Lonesome”

Oct 31, 1993 – Actor River Phoenix dies of a drug overdose outside the Viper Room in Los Angeles. His final picture was “The Thing Called Love,” based on Nashville’s famed listening room, The Bluebird Café

Oct 31, 1995 – Bryan White, Derek George and John Tirro write “So Much For Pretending” on Halloween, distracted periodically by trick-or-treaters

Oct 31, 1998 – Lari White blows out the speakers when she sings the national anthem before the Miami Hurricanes’ football game against Boston College

Oct 31, 2000 – “I Hope You Dance” becomes Lee Ann Womack‘s second platinum album

Oct 31, 2005 – “Inside TV” lists the Top 10 TV witches of all-time, ranking Lisa Hartman Black at #9 for her portrayal of Samantha Stevens’ grown-up daughter in the late-’70s series “Tabitha”

Oct 31, 2006 – During a Tuesday edition of the Grand Ole Opry, Jeff Bates gets down on one knee at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium to propose to Kelly Vaughn. She nods yes

Oct 31, 2007 – Taylor Swift goes trick-or-treating in Hendersonville, Tennessee, disguised as the hairy “Star Wars” character Chewbacca

Oct 31, 2010 – Trace Adkins performs for U.S. soldiers in Basra, Iraq, near the outset of a USO tour

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Rascal Flatts is invited to join the Opry by member Vince Gill. Photo by Chris Hollo, courtesy of Schmidt Relations.

Rascal Flatts will officially become members of the Grand Ole Opry during an induction ceremony on Saturday night. It has been just over a week since Vince Gill surprised the trio with the invitation and the band’s Jay DeMarcus tells Billboard they are still in disbelief.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Jay said. “It’s been over a week, and we still can’t believe it. I remember going to the Opry with my family growing up all the time. We sat up in the nosebleeds looking down on that little circle, and would just imagine being out there and singing out there. For it to all come full circle like it has is so emotionally overwhelming.”

By joining the Opry, Rascal Flatts becomes part of a family that includes artists such as Carrie Underwood, Blake Shelton and Trace Adkins as well as legendary artists such as Roy Acuff and Hank Williams. It is a humbling honor for the band. Continue Reading

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Alan Jackson at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum on Thursday, July 28, 2011.

This morning at The Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum, Alan Jackson, Ricky Skaggs and fiddle legend Buddy Spicher kicked off the Working on a Building: Country Music Lives Here campaign, which also featured Mayor Karl Dean and Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford.

A full house of artists, music industry execs and Ford Motor Company representatives gathered in the Ford Theater to discuss the Hall of Fame expansion. How big will the new Hall of Fame be? With the new addition, the museum will double in size, from 140,000 square feet, to more than 350,000 square feet, tripling the existing exhibit space and adding additional archival storage, an 800-seat theater and a new educational center.

“This is an unbelievable moment in the history of this museum and in the history of Nashville,” said Steve Turner, chairman of the museum’s Board of Officers and Trustees. “The campaign will finance a 200,000-square-foot museum expansion that will connect – structurally and financially – with the Omni Nashville convention hotel.  This is [an] unprecedented public-private partnership made possible by the vision and stewardship of Mayor Karl Dean.”

Ford Motor Company Executive Chairman Bill Ford, who, along with Country Music Hall of Fame member Kris Kristofferson, serves as honorary co-chair of the campaign, talked about his company’s entwined history with country music.  Continue Reading

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Jamey Johnson photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

By Robert K. Oermann
© 2011 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.

Jamey Johnson has a way of defying our expectations. At a time when it is harder than ever to sell full-length albums relative to single digital tracks, he has followed his Mercury Nashville Gold-certified That Lonesome Song with a double album. The Guitar Song contains 25 songs and demands more than an hour of a listener’s attention – yet in September it debuted at the top of the Country chart and at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard Top 200.

The music video for his anti-Hollywood song “Playing the Part,” written by Johnson and Shane Minor, was filmed in Hollywood and directed by actor Matthew McConaughey. And though at the top of his game as a Country songwriter and record producer, Johnson has also taken a left turn to produce a gospel album for the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama. Continue Reading

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Brad Paisley and Little Jimmy Dickens perform on the newly-refurbished circle of wood at the Grand Ole Opry on August 25, 2010. Photo courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry.

He’s the oldest current member of the Grand Ole Opry, someone the other members look up to — even if they have to look down to do it. Little Jimmy Dickens, all 4’-11” of him, turns 90 on Sunday, and some of his music industry friends have a party cooked up for him this weekend to celebrate.

And he’s got plenty of friends. Randy Houser was thrilled to make the introductory speech last month when the Music City Walk of Fame inducted “Tater,” a nickname Jimmy picked up from Hank Williams for his first hit, “Take An Old Cold ‘Tater (And Wait).” Fellow West Virginian Brad Paisley has repeatedly employed Little Jimmy in his videos and plopped him onto his albums in comedic tracks. And that’s just a start on the list.

But Little Jimmy’s always been a friend of his fellow Opry members. He used to walk across the alley between the Ryman Auditorium and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge with Hank. And he got his shot at the Opry and his first recording contract when he was championed by Roy Acuff, who was considered the King of Country Music.

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Rascal Flatts photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

The members of Rascal Flatts got the biggest cheers from the thousand or so people on hand, but they did not get the only applause during a Music City Walk of Fame installation event Sunday in downtown Nashville that knitted together several generations of performers.

Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney were joined by Kris Kristofferson, Mel Tillis, Little Jimmy Dickens and late singers Bobby Hebb and Eddy Arnold in receiving their sidewalk plaques, extending a row of markers that included Michael McDonald, Elvis Presley and Trace Adkins.

Emceed by GAC’s Bill Cody, the class of performers represented a swatch of Nashville music history. Beyond the contemporary Flatts crew, Kris and Mel hit their strides in the 1970s as artists, songwriters and actors. Bobby accrued a landmark 1960s pop hit with the effervescent “Sunny,” and Eddy and Little Jimmy were among the first artists to have hits with songs recorded in Nashville during the 1940s, when the town hadn’t yet earned its Music City moniker.

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Grand Ole Opry members Brad Paisley (l) and Little Jimmy Dickens (r) unveil the refurbished 6-foot circle of wood (taken from the historic Ryman Auditorium when the show moved to the Grand Ole Opry House in 1974) that was damaged in the May 2010 Nashville flood. Photo courtesy of the Grand Ole Opry.

When Nashville was flooded in May, the tragedy was best symbolized for the world by the Grand Ole Opry House. Muddy water from the Cumberland River stood nearly four feet over the Opry stage, and the manager of the Opry literally surveyed the damage by kayaking through the venue.

The Opry House reopens Tuesday, September 28 with an all-star Opry edition that airs on GAC at 9/8c as Country Comes Home: An Opry Live Celebration. The lineup features a ton of artists, including Trace Adkins, Keith Urban, Josh Turner and the two men who helped put a famous wooden circle back in the restored Opry stage: Brad Paisley and Little Jimmy Dickens.

The wood is a six-foot section of oak taken from the stage of the Ryman Auditorium, the previous home of the Opry, when the Opry House originally opened in 1974. At the Ryman, that wood supported the likes of Patsy Cline, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. But the Opry has now been at the Opry House for 36 years — longer than any home it’s previously occupied.

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Mel Tillis at the ACM Honors on September 20, 2010. Getty Images/Courtesy of the Academy of Country Music.

Martina McBride, Randy Travis, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Kenny Rogers were among the artists who showed up to perform on their behalf.

Dierks Bentley, Brad Paisley, Toby Keith and Barbara Mandrell were among the acts who sent their support via video.

But even more can be said by taking an inventory of the artists who were not on hand that were affected by the people who graced the stage Monday at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium: George Strait, Lady Antebellum, Darius Rucker, Josh Turner, Rascal Flatts, Alan Jackson, George Jones, Reba McEntire, Shania Twain… The real task would be to find artists who did not benefit from the raft of people — musicians, producers, concert executives, songwriters and pioneering artists who were honored at the fourth annual ACM Honors.

The event allowed the Academy of Country Music to give a more detailed account of the behind-the-scenes people and the pioneers of the genre than it could provide during its fast-moving televised awards.

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The 2010 Country Music Hall of Fame inductees, clockwise from upper right: Don Williams, Ferlin Husky, Billy Sherrill and Jimmy Dean. Photos courtesy of the CMA.

Don Williams, Jimmy Dean, Ferlin Husky and record producer Billy Sherrill are the latest additions to the Country Music Hall of Fame. The Country Music Association announced the honor Tuesday via press release, with a formal induction ceremony promised later this year.

“I thought I was already in there!” Jimmy joked. “Seriously, it brought a huge grin to my face. I am honored.”

Each of the four has contributed significantly to the genre. Jimmy, whose name is synonymous with a line of sausage, gave country music plenty of TV exposure as the host of several different programs, most notably “The Jimmy Dean Show,” a 1960s ABC variety series. He often featured the likes of Roger Miller, Buck Owens or Faron Young. One 1964 episode aired live from the Grand Ole Opry, while a 1965 installment captured Eddy Arnold’s recording session for “Make The World Go Away.” The CMA also used “The Jimmy Dean Show” as a vehicle to announce the Hall of Fame inductees in 1966. As a recording artist, Jimmy is best known for “Big Bad John,” a recitation about a coal-mining accident that sold a million copies after crossing into the pop charts.

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Loretta Lynn photo courtesy of Interscope Records.

More than 100 trophies will be handed out on Sunday at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards to honor the best in music in 2009. Overlooked, but maybe just as important, are a few honors that recognize artists and musicians — including Loretta Lynn, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and guitarist Harold Bradley — for efforts that span a much broader scope of time.

The Dirt Band’s “Mr. Bojangles” has been added to the Grammy Hall of Fame, certifying it as a recording of long-term influence. Loretta and the late Roy Orbison are among the artists who will be hailed Saturday in Los Angeles with Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards. That same night, Harold will receive a Trustee’s Award for his work as a session musician, studio owner and former president of the Nashville chapters of the Recording Academy and the Musicians Union.

As if that’s not enough, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and the Alabama Music Hall of Fame have both been featured in the news in the last week.

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