The 9513 - Country Music Blog

The Dixie Bee-Liners expect to release their third album in fall of 2009. Brandi Hart says the album, titled Susanville, will be the first of several bluegrass concept albums the band has been planning. Peter Cooper talked with Steve Martin about his new banjo album, The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo: “Writing lyrics [...]

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Leading up to the release of Carnival Ride, Carrie Underwood’s sophomore album was lauded as having a “more country” sound than her debut. Her cover of Randy Travis’ “I Told You” surely played a part in those proclamations, and when the steel guitar weaves throughout the song it might superficially sound that way. Here, however, [...]

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Jon Hager, who performed as one-half of The Hager Twins with his brother Jim in the original cast of Hee-Haw, passed away last week at the age of 67. Sam Lovullo, a producer of Hee-Haw and friend of the Hagers, said Jon had been in poor health and was depressed since Jim had died in [...]

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Carrie Underwood scored wins in the “Favorite Female Singer” and “Favorite Country Song” (for the song “Last Name”) categories at the People’s Choice Awards last night, and Rascal Flatts took home the trophy for “Favorite Group.” Asleep at the Wheel published the track list and personnel credits for their upcoming album with Willie Nelson, Willie [...]

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A Tennessee judge ordered all future documents relating to a paternity case against the estate of Eddy Arnold to be sealed. A California man, Christopher Edward Tanner, claimed that Arnold fathered him during an affair with his mother, who was a secretary at Arnold’s record label. The judge asserted that Arnold deserves to have his [...]

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20. Joey + Rory Rising: A Talent Competition Actually Finds Talent Outside of American Idol winner Carrie Underwood and Nashville Star castoff Miranda Lambert, the spate of talent competitions that we’ve endured since the advent of reality TV has produced few artists who could be said to possess a level of talent that aligns them [...]

Continue reading "The Year In Review: Top 20 Country Music News Stories Of 2008"

It was a dark and stormy night…oh wait, wrong story. If you will, remember back to one year ago when the CMA announced that the Hall of Fame induction ceremony would no longer take place during the televised awards broadcast and that they had no plans to acknowledge the inductees. Their reasoning then was that [...]

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Willie Nelson made his first Billboard Hot Country Songs chart appearance in five years with this week’s No. 56 debut of “That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day)” — credited to Kenny Chesney. His last appearance was another Chesney collaboration on “Pretty Paper.” The debut of “That Lucky Old Sun” expands Nelson’s [...]

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The International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) announced the nominees for their 19th annual awards. Dailey & Vincent leads the list with a total of 10 nominations and a big congratulations goes out to CMT writer Craig Shelburne, whose writing is a constant source for our news roundups, for his nomination in the Print Media Person [...]

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While he’s not exactly forgotten, it’s been a nineteen years since Charley Pride received much airplay on Country Radio–which seems unbelievable considering the dominant force he was on the charts. For the ’70s, Billboard has Charley listed as its third ranking singles artist behind only Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard. Pride also shows up as [...]

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