50 Fun Facts About Classic Country

Which nickname is Jimmie Rodgers best known by?

The Father of Country Music spent years as a railroad brakeman. Tuberculosis, diagnosed in 1924, pushed him off the trains and into performing full time.

In which Tennessee city did the Carter Family make their first recordings in August 1927?

Bristol drew dozens of hopefuls to talent scout Ralph Peer's sessions in the summer of 1927. They launched both the Carters and Jimmie Rodgers, which is why they are called country music's Big Bang.

Which member of the original Carter Family sang harmony and played lead guitar?

Maybelle picked the melody on the bass strings with her thumb while her fingers brushed the rhythm, a style that helped turn the guitar from a rhythm instrument into a lead one.

With which songwriter did Roy Acuff co-found Nashville's first major country publishing company in 1942?

Fred Rose supplied the publishing know-how. When the firm signed Hank Williams in 1946, he became the young singer's song editor and record producer.

Ernest Tubb's 1941 hit "Walking the Floor Over You" marked the rise of which country style?

Honky-tonk became his sound by accident. Tubb began as a Jimmie Rodgers imitator, but a 1939 tonsillectomy lowered his voice and ended his yodelling, so he wrote new songs to fit.

Which 1952 Kitty Wells hit was the first country number one by a solo woman?

It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels answered a Hank Thompson hit by blaming unfaithful men. Wells, close to quitting music, cut it mainly for the $125 session fee.

Which Alabama street musician, known as 'Tee-Tot', gave the young Hank Williams guitar lessons?

Rufus Payne played the blues on Alabama street corners, and the boy followed him around town. The blues phrasing and rhythm he passed on ran through Hank's singing for the rest of his life.

What was the name of Hank Williams's backing band?

The Drifting Cowboys began around 1938, when the teenage Hank was singing on Montgomery radio. He spent the war years working in Mobile's shipyards, then came home and rebuilt the band.

In the back seat of which make of car did Hank Williams die on New Year's Day 1953?

A Cadillac, his baby-blue 1952 model, was carrying him from Montgomery to a show in Canton, Ohio. He was 29, and the car is now preserved as a centrepiece of the Hank Williams Museum.

Which cover of a 1920s show tune became Hank Williams's first number one on the country chart?

Lovesick Blues, a pop tune from 1922, held the top spot for 16 weeks in 1949. Its success persuaded the Grand Ole Opry to hire him despite doubts about his reliability.

What was the name of the backing band that gave Johnny Cash his train-like chugging rhythm?

The Tennessee Three began as the Tennessee Two: Luther Perkins on guitar and Marshall Grant on bass, both car mechanics. The name changed in 1960, when drummer W. S. Holland joined.

At which Memphis studio did Johnny Cash audition for Sam Phillips in the mid-1950s?

Sun signed him in 1955, and the appliance salesman born J. R. Cash took the name Johnny there. His first single had 'Hey Porter' on one side.

In which Arkansas farming colony did Johnny Cash grow up picking cotton?

Dyess, a New Deal colony, gave struggling families land they might one day own. Cash, born in Kingsland, arrived at three; his boyhood home there is now open for tours.

Which song became Patsy Cline's first major hit when she sang it on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts?

Walkin' After Midnight reached No. 2 on the country chart and No. 12 on the pop chart after that 1957 broadcast. Then the hits dried up: she waited four years for another.

Which producer shaped Patsy Cline's Nashville sound after she moved to Decca Records in 1960?

Owen Bradley set her voice against smooth arrangements and the Jordanaires' backing vocals. Cline fought the polished sound at first, but it turned her into a crossover star.

Which two fellow country stars died alongside Patsy Cline in the March 1963 plane crash?

Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins had shared the bill with her at a Kansas City benefit for a late disc jockey's family. Her manager, Randy Hughes, was piloting them home to Nashville.

Which signature 1959 Marty Robbins song won the Grammy for Best Country and Western Recording?

El Paso ran more than four and a half minutes, far longer than radio singles of the day. Disc jockeys played it anyway, and it began 1960 at number one on both the country and pop charts.

Which 1982 Clint Eastwood film gave Marty Robbins his last screen role and a final top-ten hit, its title song?

Honkytonk Man took its name from Clancy Carlile's 1980 novel. Robbins sang the title song and played a studio musician, then died of a heart attack a week before the film opened.

Buck Owens and the Buckaroos pioneered which twangy electric sound, named for their home city?

Bakersfield was where Dust Bowl migrants had settled, and its bar bands played loud and electric. Owens cut his records with his own road band, shunning Nashville's string-sweetened studio polish.

Which Buck Owens number one did the Beatles cover with Ringo Starr singing lead?

Act Naturally was Owens's first chart-topper, in 1963. Decades later he and Ringo Starr recorded it again, this time as a duet.

Loretta Lynn was born in which Kentucky community, immortalised in "Coal Miner's Daughter"?

Butcher Hollow was the only world she knew until she married at 15, a month after meeting Doolittle Lynn. The couple soon left the mountains for a logging town in Washington state.

Which actress played Loretta Lynn in the 1980 film Coal Miner's Daughter?

Sissy Spacek was picked by Lynn herself from a photograph, before Lynn had seen any of her films. She did her own singing in the part and won the Oscar for Best Actress.

Which prison held the young Merle Haggard until his parole in 1960?

San Quentin took him after a botched roadhouse burglary and a failed jail break. Caught drunk on prison home brew, he landed in solitary, then won parole in 1960 and turned to music.

Which California governor granted Merle Haggard a full pardon in 1972?

Ronald Reagan wiped the ex-convict's record clean once he had become a country star. That same year astronaut Charles Duke carried a tape of Haggard performing aboard Apollo 16.

Which 1969 Merle Haggard number one took aim at hippies and draft-card burners?

Okie from Muskogee topped the country chart for four weeks. Haggard gave shifting accounts of how seriously he meant it, at times calling it a spoof and at others a patriotic song.

Which sparse 1975 Willie Nelson concept album did Columbia reluctantly release?

Red Headed Stranger sounded so bare that Columbia executives took it for a demo. Nelson's contract gave him creative control, so it came out untouched and produced his first number one single.

Whose band did Willie Nelson join as a bassist after moving to Nashville in 1960?

Ray Price co-owned Pamper Music, the publisher that had just signed Nelson as a songwriter, and the bass job in his band, the Cherokee Cowboys, came with the deal. Roger Miller passed through the same band.

What was country music's first platinum album, released in 1976?

Wanted! The Outlaws was a repackaging job: RCA gathered mostly older tracks by Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glaser to cash in on a trend. It sold a million.

Whose band was Waylon Jennings playing bass in when he gave up his seat on the plane that crashed in 1959?

Buddy Holly's parting joke was that he hoped the tour bus would freeze up, and Jennings shot back that he hoped the plane would crash. The exchange haunted him for decades.

Which song written by the Big Bopper gave George Jones his first number one in 1959?

White Lightning reached number one that April. Its writer never saw it happen: J. P. Richardson, the Big Bopper, had died in a plane crash two months earlier.

Which mournful 1980 ballad took George Jones to number one and won him a Grammy?

He Stopped Loving Her Today arrived when addiction had wrecked his health. It helped make him the CMA's Male Vocalist of the Year twice running.

Which 1968 number one became Tammy Wynette's signature song?

Stand by Your Man, with its plea to forgive wayward husbands, landed at the height of the women's liberation movement and drew harsh criticism in some quarters. It is also heard in the 1970 film Five Easy Pieces.

Which Epic Records producer signed Tammy Wynette in 1966 and cut her first single, 'Apartment No. 9'?

Billy Sherrill heard the unknown beautician pitch songs in his office and signed her. Within two weeks he had also renamed her: Wynette Byrd became Tammy Wynette.

Which fellow country star did Tammy Wynette marry in 1969 and later record No. 1 duets with?

George Jones and Wynette divorced in 1975, yet went back into the studio together. Their duet 'Golden Ring' reached number one the year after the split.

Whose weekly syndicated TV show did Dolly Parton join in 1967, replacing singer Norma Jean?

Porter Wagoner and his rhinestone suits made her a television regular, but she soon outshone the host. She left in 1974 after seven years, though he went on producing her records under contract.

Which Dolly Parton hit was a farewell to her duet partner?

I Will Always Love You marked her break from her television partner of seven years. Whitney Houston's 1992 version, cut for The Bodyguard, turned it into a number one pop smash.

What was the title of Parton's 1967 debut album?

Hello, I'm Dolly carried her first Top 40 country hit, 'Dumb Blonde', a jab at the stereotype. Oddly for so prolific a songwriter, it was one of only two tracks on the album she had no hand in writing.

Before country stardom, Charley Pride played professionally in which sport?

Baseball took him to the Negro American League as a teenage pitcher. He never reached the majors as a player, but years later he bought his way in as a part-owner of the Texas Rangers.

Conway Twitty built his stage name from the names of two towns, in which two states?

Arkansas and Texas hold the towns of Conway and Twitty. He joined them in 1957 as a rockabilly hopeful chasing Elvis Presley's success, eight years before he turned to country.

Which singer won four straight CMA Vocal Duo of the Year awards with Loretta Lynn in the 1970s?

Conway Twitty arrived in country as a former pop idol with a 1958 million-seller behind him, and country DJs were sceptical at first. He went on to forty number ones on Billboard's country chart.

Before going solo, Glen Campbell was a session guitarist in which LA studio group?

The Wrecking Crew put his guitar on records by Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys. In 1964 he even went on tour as a Beach Boy, standing in for Brian Wilson.

Kris Kristofferson studied at Oxford's Merton College on which prestigious scholarship?

Rhodes scholar, Army captain and helicopter pilot, he was two weeks from teaching literature at West Point when he quit for Nashville. There he swept floors as a janitor at Columbia's studios.

Which radio announcer, 'the Solemn Old Judge', founded the Grand Ole Opry in 1925?

George D. Hay was no judge: he was a young former newspaperman with no legal training. In 1927 he gave the show its lasting name, a joke on the grand opera heard just before it.

Which president played piano when the Grand Ole Opry House opened in 1974?

Richard Nixon played 'Happy Birthday' for his wife, Pat, and pulled out a yo-yo for Roy Acuff. The Opry had just left the Ryman, its home since 1943.

Under what name did the Ryman Auditorium open in 1892?

The Union Gospel Tabernacle was built for the revivalist Sam Jones, largely with riverboat captain Tom Ryman's money. When Ryman died in 1904, Jones proposed renaming the hall in his honour.

Which network first carried the Grand Ole Opry nationally, in 1939?

NBC Radio carried one segment of the show, named The Prince Albert Show for its tobacco sponsor and headlined by Roy Acuff. A year later Hollywood made a film about the Opry.

Bill Monroe named his band, the Blue Grass Boys, for the nickname of which home state?

Kentucky is the Bluegrass State, and the genre took its name from his band. The sound found its last piece in 1945, when Earl Scruggs brought his three-finger banjo picking into the group.

Which Major League Baseball team did 'Singing Cowboy' Gene Autry found in 1961 and own for decades?

The California Angels, in the familiar telling, came to him by accident: he went after the radio rights to a new Los Angeles team for his station and ended up owning the club.

Which two stars co-hosted the country variety show Hee Haw when it launched in 1969?

Buck Owens and Roy Clark were CBS's choice. The network dropped the show two years later in a purge of rural programmes, but it moved to syndication and ran for two more decades.

Which guitarist's thumb-and-finger picking, heard on Cincinnati radio, inspired the signature style of Chet Atkins?

Merle Travis picked the melody with one finger over a thumbed bass line. The teenage Atkins, listening in Georgia, worked out a variation of his own that used extra fingers.