November 17 – This Day in Country Music

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1956
Marty Robbins started a seven week run at #1 on the Country singles chart with “Singing The Blues”.

1980
Dolly Parton released her twenty-third solo studio album 9 to 5 and Odd Jobs. A concept album about working, the album was centered on Parton’s hit “9 to 5”, which served as the theme song to the film of the same name.

1998
Garth Brooks released Double Live, his tenth album a two-disc live album recorded during Brooks’ second world tour in 1998. It broke the first week sales record at the time, previously held by Pearl Jam’s Vs. since 1993, when it sold 1,085,000 copies. It became the best-selling live album in the US since Peter Frampton’s 1976 double set, Frampton Comes Alive! It has been certified 21 x Platinum by the RIAA, making it tied with Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II for the sixth best-selling album of all time in the US.

2003
American country music legend Don Gibson died of natural causes aged 75. He Scored the 1958 US #7 single ‘Oh Lonesome Me’, (covered by Neil Young on his After The Gold Rush album). His song “I Can’t Stop Loving You”, has been recorded by over 700 artists, most notably by Ray Charles in 1962. Gibson was nicknamed ‘The Sad Poet’ because he frequently wrote songs that told of loneliness and lost love.

2016
Kenny Chesney was at #1 on the US country charts with his sixteenth studio album Cosmic Hallelujah. The album was originally scheduled for release the previous year under the title Some Town Somewhere.

2017
The Rest of Our Life the first collaborative album by husband and wife, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill was released which went on to top the Country album charts. Coinciding with the album’s release date, an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, titled Mississippi Woman, Louisiana Man, was opened to celebrate the careers of both Hill and McGraw.