Gene Watson photo courtesy of Tamara Saviano.

In celebration of 50 years in country music, Gene Watson has re-recorded 25 of his classic hits to sound like the originals. Best of the Best: 25 Greatest Hits will be released February 14 on Gene’s own record label, Fourteen Carat Music, and features legendary steel guitarist Sonny Garish along with a band of players that re-created the original arrangements.

“I wanted these to sound as close to the originals as could be done,” Gene said. “I had to work so hard to capture them the same way I did them originally. All of these songs are in the same keys. I just thank the good Lord above that He’s let me keep my voice intact. In fact, I can probably hit the notes better now than I could back then. Whenever there was a question when I was re-recording these, we went back and listened to the original recording.”

The Watson family, made up of seven children, grew up moving from shack to shack as their father took logging and crop-picking jobs to make ends meet. Home became a converted school bus and Gene dropped out of school in ninth grade to help his family. He settled in Houston, where he developed a local following on the club circuit. Capitol Records picked up “Love in the Hot Afternoon” for distribution after hearing him perform and it became the first of Gene’s two-dozen Top 10 hits in early 1975.

“Seems like my career just kind of happened accidentally,” Gene says. “It was purely unintentional. Music was just a sideline. I was going to be playing and singing no matter what line of work I was going to do. I never did really have any high expectations out of the music business. Even today, I never know what to expect from one day to the next.”

Gene Watson is a survivor. He quit drinking in 1980 and quit smoking in 1990. He underwent surgery and survived colon cancer in 2000-01. Through it all, he continued to record one critically applauded collection after another. He was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2002.

“It’s unbelievable to me that it’s been 50 years,” says Gene. “For most of those years, it seemed like it took everything I could do to keep working as steady as I needed to. Now that I’m older, it seems like everything comes to me without trying. I’m working more shows than I was 15 years ago.

“It’s quite a compliment,” he adds. “I think a lot of it is because there’s not too much of what I do around anymore. I think there is still such a hunger out there for traditional country music. So I’d like to stay out there as long as I’m able to do the job and do it well.

“Every time I step out on that stage and see that audience, it’s a new beginning,” says Gene. “Even though I’ve sung these songs millions of times, I look at each one like it’s brand new to me. Every night, I try to deliver that song the best that I can.”

Gene’s classic songs like “Fourteen Carat Mind,” “Love in the Hot Afternoon,” “Farewell Party,” and “Memories to Burn” have earned him the title of a ‘singer’s singer.’ Joe Nichols, Brad Paisley, Trace Adkins, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Lee Ann Womack and Randy Travis all count him as one of their idols.

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Country music stars sure love Twitter! This week, Reba pokes fun at a hoax claiming she’d died in Austria, Sarah Buxton comes up with a clever invention, Jake Owen  deals with a tired pup, Little Big Town teases their whereabouts, and proud dad Rhett Akins hears his son, Thomas Rhett, on the radio for the first time. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Country Tweets Of The Week.

Photo courtesy of Twitter.com/reba.

Reba – Reba: The rumors of my Austrian death are greatly exaggerated!

Little Big Town – LBTMusic: Yep, we’re in the studio with Vince Gill right now.

Sarah Buxton – SarahBuxton: Invention: The Crack Flap. Comes up over the back of your pants & covers the inevitable plumbers crack caused by today’s low rise pants.

Photo courtesy of Twitter.com/thebandperry.

The Band Perry - TheBandPerry: Thx Las Vegas for an amazing night!!! Fake Brad Paisley has left the building. (np)

Rhett Atkins – RhettAkins: @ThomasRhett was played on country radio for the first time today! Show my boy some love by congratulating and following him. #proudpop

Brett Eldredge – BrettEldredge: I wish there was an app to change guitar strings, I really don’t feel like doing that right now #fb

Photo courtesy of Twitter.com/jakeowen.

Jake Owen – JakeOwen: He’s tired from destroying my house

Katie Armiger – KatieArmiger: You know you look rough when you go to the counter in an airport to buy medicine, and they say ‘just take it’ and don’t charge you. Ouch.

Randy Montana – RandyMontana: Just witnessed an 87 year old man do the splits in a Cracker Barrel. I can check that one off the bucket list.

Photo courtesy of Twitter.com/davidnail.

David Nail – DavidNail: This is the Burger King sign in my hometown of Kennett, Missouri!

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Photo courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum.

When the Encyclopedia of Country Music was first published in 1998, it became an instant reference and definitive source on country music. Now, the second edition of the book has been released by Oxford University Press and the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. The new edition, compiled by museum staff, features new entries on artists who have profoundly influenced country music in recent years, including Kenny Chesney, Dixie Chicks, Miranda Lambert, Brad Paisley, Rascal Flatts, Blake Shelton, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban and more.

More new entries in the book focus on the most important studio musicians, songwriters and music executives in the last decade. It also explores the latest and most critical industry trends, such as the digital revolution, the shifting politics of country music, and the impact of American Idol. The importance of Nashville to country music and even the stage costumes worn by country stars are also featured in the new edition.

“I’ve loved country music all my life, and it still amazes me how much more I can learn about it,” Reba McEntire said. “The Encyclopedia of Country Music will be a reference book for the next generation of country music lovers to learn about the folks I was blessed enough to get to know and work with. I will enjoy reading it and getting reacquainted with our history.”

“The Encyclopedia is not just a dry compendium of names and facts, but a rich archive of our shared history of the most American of art forms: country music,” Rosanne Cash said. “The second edition of the Encyclopedia of Country Music is also a point of great pride for me, as so many of my extended family members are included in these pages.”

Vince Gill wrote the foreword in the second edition. The book includes more than 1,200 entries and a vivid photographic insert featuring classic, provocative and recent country music album art. The Encyclopedia of Country Music is available for order at www.countrymusichalloffame.org.

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Rascal Flatts photo courtesy of Big Machine Records. Photo credit Chapman Baehler.

Rascal Flatts will receive the CRS 2012 Artist Humanitarian Award during Country Radio Seminar on Wednesday, February 22 in Nashville following the event’s keynote address. The band was chosen to receive the honor based on their charitable contributions and humanitarian endeavors throughout their career.

Some of the band’s charitable work includes a donation of $3 million to the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt’s Pediatric Surgery Center in 2010; and currently serving as celebrity spokespersons for the national suicide prevention organization and The Jason Foundation. They have been members of the American Red Cross Celebrity Cabinet for the last seven years.

“The board is very pleased to honor Rascal Flatts with the CRS Artist Humanitarian Award,” CRS Executive Director Bill Mayne said. “They join a long, distinguished list of celebrities who have received this prestigious award since it was instated in 1990.”

The CRS Artist Humanitarian Award was first given out in 1990 to honor country music artists who have shown exceptional humanitarian efforts throughout their career.  Tim McGraw and Faith Hill received the award last year. Other recipients include Trace Adkins, Randy Owen, Toby Keith, Brad Paisley, Brooks & Dunn, Reba, Vince Gill, Garth Brooks and Charlie Daniels, among others.

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Keith Urban photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Keith Urban’s third annual All for the Hall benefit concert has been rescheduled for April 10 after having to be postponed while Keith underwent and recovered from successful vocal cord surgery. The concert, which benefits the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s All for the Hall fund, will feature performances by Keith, Vince Gill, Alabama, Alison Krauss & Union Station, The Band Perry, Blue Sky Riders, Diamond Rio, Exile, Lady Antebellum, Little Big Town, The Oak Ridge Boys,  Pistol Annies, Rascal Flatts and Thompson Square.

“My goal for the concert, is really the same as the halls,” Keith said. “To help country fans connect the dots – to find out where their music came from, how its evolved and is still evolving and to hear the artists that have influenced their favorite artists. Country music is like a big beautiful strange family tree and nowhere is that more honored than at the Country Music Hall Of Fame and Museum.”

“The first two We’re All for the Hall concerts have been landmarks for this institution,” said Museum Director Kyle Young.  “They have been the most successful fundraisers in the museum’s history, together raising roughly $1 million.  And they have not only set a new standard for fundraising and event coordination, but also brought together an entire community and helped us to see what can be done by individuals when there is a collective passion for a cause.

Tickets start at $25 and will go on sale January 27th at 10:00 AM/CT. They can be purchased at Ticketmaster.com, all Ticketmaster locations, the Bridgestone Arena box office or by phone at (800) 745-3000. There are also a limited amount of VIP Packages available.

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Keith Urban photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Keith Urban will return to the stage for the first time since undergoing successful vocal cord surgery late last year with a performance on the Grand Ole Opry February 3. Keith’s performance will take place as the Opry wraps its winter run at the historic Ryman Auditorium. The Opry returns to the Grand Ole Opry House the next day.

Other artists scheduled to appear on the Opry with Keith are Charley Pride and the Oak Ridge Boys, with more artists to be added. Keith is also scheduled to perform on the Opry on March 9 at the Opry House. Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Del McCoury, Craig Morgan, Ricky Skaggs, Josh Turner and more will appear on the Opry stage in coming weeks.

Fans can purchase tickets at opry.com or by calling 1-(800) SEE-OPRY. The Opry can be heard live on 650 WSM-AM, SIRIUS XM Satellite Radio, and opry.com. You can also catch re-airs of Opry Live on GAC! Check Air Times >>

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Gene Watson photo courtesy of Tamara Saviano.

To celebrate his 50th anniversary in country music, Gene Watson will release Best of the Best: 25 Greatest Hits on his own Fourteen Carat Music label on February 14. He has re-recorded 25 of his classic hits to sound like the originals. Sonny Garish, legendary steel-guitar player, returns for the recordings and is joined by a group of players that recreate the original arrangements.

“My first recording ever was on a little ‘ol independent label that was started up just for this recording session, Sun Valley Records,” Gene said. “Maybe I thought I could sell them at my shows or something. I wrote the record, ‘If It Was That Easy.’ It was not any good, but, boy, I thought that was something. I had my own record.”

In the music business, a major-label artist usually pays for their recording sessions though the label owns the recording. Gene’s classics are owned by four different corporations and so by re-recording them to sound like the originals on his own label, he now ‘owns’ them all himself.

“I wanted these to sound as close to the originals as could be done,” he said. “I had to work so hard to capture them the same way I did them originally. All of these songs are in the same keys. I just thank the good Lord above that He’s let me keep my voice intact. In fact, I can probably hit the notes better now than I could back then. Whenever there was a question when I was re-recording these, we went back and listened to the original recording.

Gene’s performances of hits such as “Fourteen Carat Mind,” “Love in the Hot Afternoon,” “Farewell Party,” and “Memories to Burn” have earned him the reputation as a ‘Singer’s Singer.’ Joe Nichols, Brad Paisley, Trace Adkins, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Lee Ann Womack and Randy Travis all count him as one of their idols.

The Watson family, which included seven children, grew up drifting from shack to shack as their father took logging and crop-picking jobs. Home became a converted school bus and Gene dropped out of school in the ninth grade to join his parents in the field. He settled in Houston, where he developed a strong local following. Capitol Records picked up “Love in the Hot Afternoon” for distribution after hearing him perform and it became the first of Gene’s two-dozen Top 10 hits in early 1975.

“Seems like my career just kind of happened accidentally,” Gene said. “It was purely unintentional. Music was just a sideline. I was going to be playing and singing no matter what line of work I was going to do. I never did really have any high expectations out of the music business. Even today, I never know what to expect from one day to the next.

Gene refused songwriting credit when he re-wrote “Pick the Wildwood Flower” to make it an autobiographical track and songwriter Lawton Williams was so grateful for Gene’s performance of “Farewell Party” that he gave Gene his 1980 BMI Award for it. Gene quit drinking in 1980, quit smoking in 1990, and underwent surgery and survived colon cancer in 2000-2001. He was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2002.

“There is one thing,” Gene said. “As far as I know, I do have an impeccable reputation in the music business, and I wouldn’t take nothing for that. If anything in the world means ‘success’ to me, that right there does.”

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Vince Gill photo by Tim Wright, courtesy of UMG Nashville.

Vince Gill has been added to the MerleFest 25 lineup. Vince will perform on Thursday, April 26, delivering the closing performance of the evening. MerleFest 25, presented by Lowe’s, is slated for April 26 – 29, 2012, and will once again take place on the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. MerleFest is an annual homecoming of musicians and music fans, gathering to celebrate the memory of musician Eddy Merle Watson, beloved son of American music icon Doc Watson.

Such blockbuster hits as “Go Rest High on That Mountain,” “Whenever You Come Around” and “I Still Believe In You” have helped Vince Gill sell more than 26 million albums over the course of his highly successful career. He has earned 18 CMA Awards, including Entertainer of the Year in 1993 and 1994. He is tied with George Strait for having won the most CMA Male Vocalist Awards (five), and is currently third only to George Strait (22) and Brooks & Dunn (19) for accumulating the most CMA Awards in history. Vince is a member of the Grand Ole Opry and has received 20 Grammy Awards to date. Just last month, he scored his 41^st Grammy nomination as a co-writer on “Threaten Me With Heaven,” nominated for Best Country Song. In August of 2007, the Country Music Association inducted Vince as a member of the coveted Country Music Hall of Fame.

Vince’s most recent project, Guitar Slinger (released in October 2011) is a favorite of both fans and music critics across the country, with iTunes proclaiming “Vince Gill’s superlative work in the ‘80s and ‘90s remains a high standard to reach, but he exceeds expectations on Guitar Slinger… When it comes to musical finesse and pure feeling, nobody does it like Vince.”

An avid golfer, Vince helped create the annual Vince Gill Pro-Celebrity Invitational Golf Tournament (“The Vinny”) in 1993 in order to help support junior golf programs throughout Tennessee. Besides being known for his talent as a performer, musician and songwriter, Vince is regarded as one of country music’s best known humanitarians, participating in hundreds of charitable events throughout his career.

Ticket purchases for MerleFest 25 can be made on the web at www.merlefest.org or by calling 1-800-343-7857. An early bird ticket discount is available through March 12, 2012.

With over 90 artists performing on 14 stages during the course of the event, MerleFest 25 is an excellent entertainment value. A complete list of confirmed performers is available at www.merlefest.org. Additionally, up-to-the-minute lineup additions for the festival can be obtained through the festival’s e-newsletter and through Facebook and Twitter.

MerleFest, considered one of the premiere music festivals in the country, is held on the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. MerleFest was founded in 1988 in memory of Eddy Merle Watson and is a celebration of what Doc Watson calls “traditional plus” music, meaning the traditional music of the Appalachian regional plus whatever other styles we were in the mood to play.” The annual festival has become the primary fundraiser for the WCC Endowment Corporation, funding scholarships, capital projects and other educational needs.

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Grammy-winning artist Glen Campbell.

In June, Glen Campbell revealed in an exclusive interview with People magazine that he has Alzheimer’s disease. The “Rhinestone Cowboy” singer and his wife, Kim, decided to go public with Glen’s diagnosis because they wanted his fans to know what was wrong.

“Glen is still an awesome guitar player and singer,” Kim said. “But if he flubs a lyric or gets confused onstage, I wouldn’t want people to think, ‘What’s the matter with him? Is he drunk?’”

The couple told People he had been suffering from short-term memory loss for years before being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Glen embarked on a farewell tour in the fall of 2011 and also released his last studio album, Ghost on the Canvas, in August. “I still love making music,” Glen said. “And I still love performing for my fans. I’d like to thank them for sticking with me through thick and thin.”

Glen and Kim sat down with ABC’s Terry Moran, co-anchor of Nightline, to discuss Glen’s disease and how the family is coping. Married for nearly 30 years, Kim said Glen’s sense of humor has helped the family deal with the difficult time.

“He’ll tell a joke, laugh at it and a few minutes later tell the same joke, laugh, and then we laugh at him because he’s just enjoying it so much,” she said. “You just make the best of each day and try not to worry about tomorrow.”

“Definitely take care of what’s today and tomorrow’s going to have what it has,” Glen added. “There’s a verse in the Bible that says, ‘If the man findeth a good wife, he’s found a good thing,’ and I found a good thing, or she found me. Did you find me or did I find you?” Kim replied that the pair had found each other. “That’s what we did. Amen,” Glen said.

Music is helping Glen cope with his disease and also helps his memory. “Music is a natural memory aid, and we’re finding out it really does help his memory and help keep him from declining,” Kim said on Nightline. “So it’s really good for him and all the love he gets from all the fans is really encouraging, so that’s why we want to do it as long as we can, because it’s healthy for all of us. Music is good medicine.”

During the CMA Awards this year, Vince Gill, Keith Urban and Brad Paisley paid tribute to Glen. The three performed a medley of Glen’s hits “By the Time I Get To Phoenix,” “Wichita Lineman” and “Galveston” with Jimmy Webb, the man who penned the songs, joining in on piano. Glen sang along in the audience before joining the group onstage. “It was awesome, it really was,” Glen said backstage after the performance. “The whole thing was just wonderful.”

Glen’s last tour date is currently listed as March 24, 2012 in Silver Springs, Florida.

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Reba McEntire photo courtesy of The Valory Music Co.

Reba and her family love every part of the Christmas season, but the family has one special tradition they do every year before diving into presents. They sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus and continue the celebration with dessert. “Narvel’s mom, Gloria Blackstock, makes a cake for Jesus for his birthday,” Reba said.

While Reba loves celebrating Jesus on Christmas, she also loves the part of the holiday that centers around Santa Claus and gift giving. “It is Jesus’ birthday and he gets so many gifts,” Reba explained. “Santa Claus and Jesus have gotten together and Jesus is sharing his gifts and Santa Claus is distributing to all the good little boys and girls.”

Brantley Gilbert has spent a lot of the year on the road and is looking forward to heading home to spend time with his very big family for the holidays. Brantley’s parents are divorced, but while Brantley is close to his dad, he admits to being a Mama’s boy. He’s also looking forward to spending time with his little brother. For him, you don’t have to be a blood relative to be family.

“The guys I ride bikes with, we’re inseparable,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade one of ‘em for the world. I have a really big family and I value that a lot. Even the people from Valory [his record label], since we’ve been with them, I mean, they’re family now too. Once we’re in business together, we’re family. “

Brantley shared one of his favorite holiday recipes with GAC – Phlegm! Don’t let the name fool you though – Brantley says the brownie/pudding/Cool Whip combination can also be called ‘Chocolate Delight.’ Get the recipe >>

Stars like Vince Gill, Martina McBride, Scotty McCreery and more shared their favorite holiday memories with GAC as well as some of their favorite gifts. Check out our Holiday Memories channel to see who picked out a wedding band with their mother and who spends their holiday singing!

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