August 18 – This Day in Country Music

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1938
Born on this day in North Little Rock, Arkansas, was Allen Reynolds, producer. Best known for producing virtually every album by Garth Brooks, he also produced Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”.

1958
Don Gibson scored his second Country #1 hit with “Blue Blue Day” which remained on the Country charts for a total of six months.

1973
Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn were at #1 on the Billboard country chart with “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man”, the lead single, and the title track, of their 1973 album was also the duo’s third single.

1977
Waylon Jennings was at #1 on the US country album charts with Ol’ Waylon. The album features one of his signature songs, a track featuring Willie Nelson called “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)”, as well as the Neil Diamond song “Sweet Caroline”, a version of Kenny Rogers’ “Lucille” and a medley of the two Arthur Crudup songs previous recorded by Elvis.

1989
Regal, Minnesota had the honour of being the smallest place Johnny Cash had ever played. The farm town, consisting of two bars, a church and a baseball field, only had a population of around 45 people, although a crowd approaching 5000 people, mostly from out of town, attended the show, billed as Cornstalk ’89.

2003
Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett were at #1 on the Billboard country singles chart with the Jim “Moose” Brown and Don Rollins penned song, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere”. The song spent a total of eight weeks at the top of the chart and won the Country Music Association (CMA) Award for Vocal Event of the Year.