Vince Gill From KISS to 22 Grammys: A Booed Bluegrass Opener Turned Country Royalty
On March 4, 1976, a teenage bluegrass band took the stage to open for KISS. The face-painted crowd, primed for pyrotechnics and distortion, booed and threw things at the acoustic kids almost immediate...
13 Kesä 20min
Why Bobbie Gentry Walked Away From Fame: The Star Who Dethroned the Beatles, Then Vanished
In 1967, a debut single from a woman raised on a Mississippi farm with no indoor plumbing knocked the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper off the top of the charts. Bobbie Gentry's "Ode to Billie Joe" made her an ov...
13 Kesä 20min
Why Dan + Shay Almost Quit Music: From Emo Bands and T-Pain to Country Stardom
On paper, Dan + Shay should never have existed. Dan Smyers studied finance at Carnegie Mellon and fronted an emo band on the Vans Warped Tour; Shay Mooney was a homeschooled kid from Natural Dam, Arka...
13 Kesä 18min
Why Dolly Parton Said No to Elvis: The Publishing Deal That Made Her Fortune
In 1974, Elvis Presley wanted to record Dolly Parton's brand-new song. It should have been the ultimate golden ticket, until Colonel Tom Parker demanded she hand over half the publishing rights. So th...
13 Kesä 19min
Why Nashville Couldn't Silence Loretta Lynn: Banned Songs and a Coal Miner's Daughter
Married at fifteen, a mother of six before she was old enough to vote, and raised in a remote Kentucky hollow, Loretta Lynn had every reason to stay invisible. Instead she wrote songs so honest about ...
13 Kesä 17min
Willie Nelson and the Outlaw Rebellion: The Ghostwriter Who Beat Nashville and the IRS
Before he was a Highwayman and a household name, Willie Nelson was a broke Nashville songwriter selling future classics for pocket change, including Family Bible for fifty dollars and Night Life for a...
13 Kesä 22min
Dierks Bentley: Banned From the Opry, Then Made a Member
He snuck past security at the Grand Ole Opry, got slapped with a permanent trespassing ban — and years later that same institution made him a member. Dierks Bentley's rise through country music is one...
11 Kesä 19min
Billy Joe Shaver: The Outlaw Poet Who Lived Every Word
He lost his fingers in a sawmill, survived a heart attack on stage, and shot a man outside a Texas saloon — then wrote some of the most poetic songs in country music history. Billy Joe Shaver was outl...
11 Kesä 19min
