Darryl Worley photo courtesy of Stroudavarious Records.

After six years of effort, the Darryl Worley Cancer Center is set to open in Savannah, Tenn., next month.

Originally expected to open next year, the facility is located on the grounds at the Hardin Medical Center, allowing people in the area to have radiation and chemotherapy locally instead of driving long distances for their treatments. The cancer center cost $2 million to build, and Darryl has worked with a couple of Hardin County medical agencies to raise $1.7 million toward the project. They hope to have the remainder by the time construction is completed.

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Taylor Swift photo courtesy of Big Machine Records.

Taylor Swift couldn’t ask for much better timing. As she heads into the last week of promotion for her new album, Speak Now, she was named Songwriter/Artist of the Year Sunday night during the Nashville Songwriters Association International’s annual songwriter awards at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel.

Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin took Song of the Year for penning the emotional Miranda Lambert hit “The House That Built Me,” and Chris DuBois earned Songwriter of the Year for his work as an author of Craig Morgan’s “This Ain’t Nothin’” and the Brad Paisley singles “Then” and “Welcome To The Future.”

The awards were part of a formal evening that saw four new members added to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and had 11 titles recognized by the songwriting community as the cream of the crop: Songs I Wish I’d Written. That list included “Need You Now,” “White Liar,” “Big Green Tractor” and Taylor’s “You Belong With Me.”

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Country Music Hall of Fame member Tom T. Hall.

There’s a segment of older artists who resent the current crop of performers, who represent change for a genre that’s held in high regard by its previous crop of talent. Country Music Hall of Fame member Tom T. Hall is not one of those crabby old-guard dudes.

“Music is an art form,” he told a passel of programmers Thursday at the Country Radio Seminar. “It should not be done the way it used to be done. If we do it the way they used to do it, that’s copying.”

Not that T. is above getting crabby.

“I do resent,” he allowed, “the fact that they’re makin’ so much money!”

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Alan Jackson photo courtesy of SonyBMG Nashville.

Nashville celebrated its songwriters for two straight nights this week with Alan Jackson and Taylor Swift each earning trophies as Songwriter/Artist of the Year from two different organizations.

Taylor picked up the Songwriter/Artist trophy from the Nashville Songwriters Association International Sunday, the same night Toby Keith earned Songwriter/Artist of the Decade. Wynn Varble claimed the NSAI’s Songwriter of the Year after netting hits with Darryl Worley’s recording of “Sounds Like Life To Me” and Brad Paisley’s rendition of “Waitin’ On A Woman,” named Song of the Year.

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