BMI Icon Billy Sherrill and Taylor Swift with her awards for BMI Songwriter of the Year and Co Writer of BMI Song of the Year and BMI President Del Bryant at the 58th Annual BMI Country Music Awards at BMI on November 9, 2010 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images for BMI)
Through songs such as “Mine,” “White Horse” and “Fifteen,” Taylor Swift has shown a real appreciation for great drama and complex character development.
This week, she’s experienced drama firsthand. On Tuesday, she won BMI’s Country Songwriter of the Year award, becoming the youngest person ever to claim it. And she and co-writer Liz Rose shared Country Song of the Year for “You Belong With Me,” recognized as the most-played country title over a full year, according to the performing rights organization.
Just a day earlier, Taylor sang at a funeral for a friend.
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…)
A number of folks on the Texas red-dirt scene are wondering if the album can break him nationally, but nobody’s hoping for that result more than Randy himself. Randy recently chatted with On the Streets host Suzanne Alexander about his unique brand of country music:
The group played its first gig 10 years ago in San Marcos, Texas, at the Cheatham Street Warehouse, one of the venues George Strait played frequently on his way up. RRB built up a significant following in the Lone Star State with a series of independent albums and got noticed in Nashville, where they signed five years ago this month with Mercury Records. Both of their previous albums for the label hit the Top 10 on the Billboard country albums chart — particularly impressive because the band has never had a bona fide hit.
GAC's Bill Cody (r) chats with Randy Travis and Carrie Underwood on the red carpet at the second annual ACM Honors. Photo by Keri Braswell, GAC staff.
Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of Randy Travis’ first album on a major label, Storms Of Life, and he’ll observe the milestone with a project that teams him with a number of fellow artists.
Already pegged for the album are duets with Alan Jackson, Josh Turner, Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney as Randy mixes new songs with some familiar titles from the past. The older songs include a collaboration with John Anderson on a remake of Randy’s 1986 hit “Diggin’ Up Bones.”
Tammy Wynette photo courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The Country Music Hall of Fame will open a new exhibit Friday that honors one of the legends of the genre, though it’s clouded by the death of her former husband.
Tammy Wynette: First Lady Of Country Music, Presented By Great American Country Television Network is loaded with memorabilia celebrating the singer, who died in 1998 just months before her induction into the Hall of Fame.
But when the exhibit opens, it won’t be seen by her last husband, George Richey, who died earlier this summer. The death was not made public, though Music Row magazine reported George has already been laid to rest near Tammy in Nashville’s Woodlawn Cross Mausoleum.
The Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame have new inductees on the way, the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum has a couple of fundraisers on the docket in Nashville and Los Angeles, and one Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member invoked the names of two Country Hall of Famers when he played next door to Nashville’s best-known museum.
Here’s a bundle of Hall of Fame-related music news:
Tammy Wynette photo courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
One of the most distinctive performers in country’s lengthy history will be highlighted at the Country Music Hall of Fame with the Aug. 20 debut of Tammy Wynette: First Lady Of Country Music, Presented By Great American Country Television Network.
Poised for a 10-month run, the exhibit will feature photos, film footage, recordings and memorabilia from her life and career, including awards, stage clothing, her 1977 appointment book and a lead-crystal vase filled with cotton that Tammy picked with her own hands. For years, she kept the vase on her coffee table — likely as a reminder of the working-class roots from which she rose.
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.
In a here-today-gone-tomorrow culture, the names might not ring familiar to everyone. A girl in her 20s outside the Hall asked at the end of the night about Sunday’s soiree, then shrugged her shoulders in a “Who?” sort of manner when told the names of the inductees. But both men provided important building blocks to get the genre to the mainstream idiom it is today.
George Strait photo by Danny Clinch, courtesy of UMG Nashville.
Some of the biggest stars in country music history — George Strait, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson and Tammy Wynette — are among a slew of Country Music Hall of Fame members who’ve made their way into the headlines of late.
George set an unprecedented mark on the country charts, Hank earned a prestigious honor and Willie went to a Texas courtroom, where he could have been called on to testify in a trial involving a shooting outside a bar.
Here’s a roundup of Hall of Famers who continue to make an impact in a variety of ways:
Creating entertainment in all its forms is/was the central tenet of such major stars as Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, and numerous members of the Country Music Hall of Fame have had their names in the headlines in recent days for essentially doing what they do. Or for contemplating what they do and how they do it.
