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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Loretta Lynn photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville.

Two major icons are celebrating their 50th anniversaries in 2010: Loretta Lynn and Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge.

You certainly know Loretta, the woman whose feisty songs about contemporary womanhood made her an easy selection for the Country Music Hall of Fame.

If you don’t know about Tootsie’s, you should. The purple bar sits on Lower Broadway in Nashville, across the alley from the Ryman Auditorium, where the the Grand Ole Opry was held when Loretta made her debut in 1960. Tootsie’s is a small watering hole that still exists. During its early years, it was the gathering place for many of country’s songwriters and biggest stars, including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Mel Tillis, Faron Young, Marty Robbins, Harlan Howard and Hank Cochran.

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Rascal Flatts photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

Rascal Flatts and four members of the Country Music Hall of Fame will all receive additional recognition next month when they’re embedded in the Music City Walk of Fame in downtown Nashville.

Little Jimmy Dickens, Kris Kristofferson, Mel Tillis and the late Eddy Arnold — all of whom have bronze plaques nearby in the Hall of Fame — will have their names etched in the pavement alongside Rascal Flatts Nov. 7. So will the late Bobby Hebb, a Nashville-based artist who earned a 1960s hit with “Sunny.”

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Jamey Johnson photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

When Jamey Johnson released his 2008 album That Lonesome Song, he was uniformly hailed for the quality of the songs and the honesty of the performances. The album tipped its hat to traditional country and was recognized in The Nashville Scene’s annual Country Music Critics Poll as the best CD of that year.

Now Jamey’s new double-disc project The Guitar Song is earning similar feedback. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Albums chart and it’s getting early recognition as an Album of the Year candidate on the 2011 awards circuit.

All of that’s well and good, though Jamey himself seems less interested than anybody in what kind of accolades it earns. The sales? The marketing? He’s more than happy to let the record label take care of those issues.

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Little Jimmy Dickens and Brad Paisley at the Grand Ole Opry House on Tuesday, September 28, 2010. © 2010 Grand Ole Opry® Hollo Photographics

Five months after a flood left the hallowed stage of Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House submerged under 46 inches of water, the venue reoped Tuesday as the Opry held a three-hour event — two hours airing as a GAC special, Country Comes Home: An Opry Live Celebration.

The flood’s assault on the Opry House has been the biggest story in country music this year, so it’s only appropriate that the evening was heavy on music from 2010: Jason Aldean’s “My Kinda Party,” Blake Shelton’s “All About Tonight,” Brad Paisley’s “Anything Like Me” and Keith Urban’s “I’m In,” among them.

But the night also included performances that offered a smattering of country music history — of which, the Opry has been central. Dierks Bentley and Del McCoury injected bluegrass into the proceedings with a cover of Bill Monroe’s “Roll On, Buddy, Roll On.” Martina McBride and Connie Smith traded lines in the 1964 classic “Once A Day.” Charlie Daniels teamed with Montgomery Gentry on a sizzling version of “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” And Josh Turner and Lorrie Morgan turned in a stunning version of the George Jones & Tammy Wynette hit “Golden Ring.” (Lorrie, incidentally, wore a leopard-patterned dress — not something in red…)

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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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Jamey Johnson photo courtesy of UMG Nashville.

In an era where many consumers buy their music one track at a time, Jamey Johnson has ramped up an old-fashioned idea. He’s not just releasing an album today — he’s putting out a two-disc CD. And for fans who want to go really retro, he’s also making it available as a three-disc vinyl album.

All of that’s appropriate, because Jamey’s drawing on some old ideas about country with The Guitar Song. It includes remakes of songs originated by Mel Tillis, Vern Gosdin, Kris Kristofferson and Keith Whitley. And Jamey did it with an old-fashioned attitude. It was recorded as live as possible in the studio. The recordings were informal, much like the way he sings his songs when he takes them on the road.

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Lady Antebellum photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

When Miranda Lambert set a record for female acts by picking up nine awards nominations this week from the Country Music Association, no one was more surprised than her.

But that wasn’t the only shock-a-roonie of the two-day nominations announcement. Lady Antebellum achieved something that’s never been done before, Steel Magnolia and The Band Perry each accomplished something that’s probably been done only once. And Miranda did something that’s only happened twice.

Here’s a bevy of CMA trivia that you may not have seen anywhere else:

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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.

It’s a six-foot piece of circular wood, scuffed and nicked and grooved, but it’s a monumental symbol. Brad Paisley and Little Jimmy Dickens joined four construction workers Wednesday in installing a major piece of oak into the center of the stage at the Grand Ole Opry House.

The moment was captured by a herd of reporters and photographers as Nashville continues its recovery from a devastating flood in early May. At that time, water from the Cumberland River swamped the historic venue, piling 46 inches of liquid on top of the stage. The waters were so significant that mud was hurled onto the ceiling and Opry VP and general manager Pete Fisher literally floated a kayak through the house.

Dirt and construction dust still litter the grounds around the Opry House, but the placement of the circle back onto the stage was a hardy symbol for the restoration of the Opry and its history. The circle was cut from the floor of the Ryman Auditorium and installed at the Opry House when it opened in 1974, providing a physical link between current generations of Opry members and some of the late performers who stood behind the mic stand on that same wood — people like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Roy Acuff and Marty Robbins. It was damaged during May’s floods, but not so much that it couldn’t be repaired. Its resilience embodies as well as ever the durability of the Opry and its legend.

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Charley Pride, pictured here second from the left, played for the Memphis Red Sox during the late 1950's. Photo courtesy of CharleyPride.com.

In the years before Charley Pride became a country singer, he proved himself as a talent on the baseball field. He was a player in the Negro Leagues, and he once pitched four innings in an all-star game against a team made of major-league players, including future Hall of Fame members Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

Now that Charley’s a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, he finds himself back in baseball in a big way. On Thursday, an 18-person investment group headed by former pitcher Nolan Ryan placed the highest bid in a Fort Worth auction of the Texas Rangers ballclub, with a bid of $593 million, according to MLB.com. The transaction still has to be approved by Major League Baseball, which has its next quarterly meetings Wednesday and Thursday in Minneapolis.

Charley’s hardly the only country singer who’s ever had a stake in a professional team. Glen Campbell was part of the original investment group in the Arizona Diamondbacks, Roy Clark had a hand in the ownership of the Tulsa Drillers, and several stars — Conway Twitty, Jerry Reed and the Oak Ridge Boys’ Richard Sterban — all had a share when the Nashville Sounds franchise was established in the 1970s. Country’s most-successful owner was Gene Autry, who established the Los Angeles Angels in 1960.

A few other sports notes from country music:

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