1963
Four months following her death, Decca Records released The Patsy Cline Story, a double album compilation consisting of Patsy Cline’s best-known songs between 1961 and 1963.
1979
Born on this day, in Sumter, South Carolina. was Lee Brice, country music singer signed to Curb Records. His highest-charting single “A Woman Like You”, reached #1 in April 2012. He also scored Billboard’s Top Country Song of 2010 with “Love Like Crazy”, the title track to his 2010 debut album; the song spent 56 weeks on the Hot Country Songs chart, peaking at # 3 and setting a record for the longest run in the chart’s history.
1987
Dwight Yoakam scored his second consecutive #1 album with Hillbilly Deluxe. Four of its tracks would find their way into the Top 40 of the Hot Country Singles chart in 1987 and 1988, all topping out in the lower half of the Top Ten. Chronologically, they were “Little Sister”, “Little Ways” “Please, Please Baby” and “Always Late with Your Kisses”.
1991
Brooks & Dunn released their debut single “Brand New Man” which peaked at #1 on the Country charts. It made them only the second country music band in history to have its debut single reach #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart (behind Diamond Rio’s “Meet in the Middle” from four months earlier).
2004Ray Charles died due to acute liver disease at his home in Los Angeles, California. Charles helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960’s. His 1962 album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music and its sequel Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Vol. 2, helped to bring country into the mainstream of music. His version of the Don Gibson song, “I Can’t Stop Loving You” topped the Pop chart for five weeks.
2005
Just two weeks after winning American Idol, Carrie Underwood made her Grand Ole Opry debut, singing the Roy Orbison classic “Crying”.
2015
Emmylou Harris was praised by Barack Obama as she received the 2015 Polar Music Prize. The US president sent congratulations adding: “Music brings people together in an increasingly interconnected world.” Harris, from Birmingham, Alabama, has recorded more than 25 albums over four decades and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
