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      Amanda Shires Isn’t Letting Nashville, or Her Marriage, Off the Hook

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      The singer, songwriter and fiddler found comfort with an unexpected collaborator and plumbed new depths on her latest album, “Take It Like a Man.”Amanda Shires wasn’t trying to name-drop, honest. It’s just that she’s been working alongside country music legends since she was 15, so most of the characters who populate her anecdotes happen to need no introduction.My onyx ring reminded her of one John Prine once gave her — which she promptly dropped down a sewer grate. A few years back, when Shires got a long-tipped manicure shortly before she had to play fiddle at a show, Dolly Parton gave her sage advice she’s never forgotten: “You can’t just show up, you’ve got to practice with the nails.” The first person to believe in her as a songwriter, when she was still just a teenager, was the outlaw country icon Billy Joe Shaver, with whom she played in the long-running Western Swing group the Texas Playboys. Shires met Maren Morris, her friend and bandmate in the supergroup the Highwomen, when Morris was a precocious kid of just “10 or 12” singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky” around a campfire when the two of them happened to be playing the same local festival.Shires added, in her characteristic bone-dry deadpan, “She hasn’t gotten any taller.”On a humid Friday earlier this month, the singer-songwriter nursed a Diet Coke in a cozy corner of the Bowery Hotel lobby in Manhattan. Shires, who is 40 and has been married to the musician Jason Isbell for nine years, wore a white tank that showed off her many tattoos (including a red “Mercy” on her biceps, the name of the couple’s 6-year-old daughter), black jean shorts, and — despite her dark-auburn hair still being a little wet from the shower — a full smoky eye. She was discussing her electrifying new album “Take It Like a Man,” which, if there’s any justice in the world or maybe just in Nashville, ought to make this wildly underrated country-music Zelig into a household name.A violinist since childhood, Shires began her career as a sidewoman. But after taking Shaver’s advice and moving from Texas to Nashville in 2004, she found her footing as a solo artist, releasing six increasingly sophisticated solo albums and one with the Highwomen, which features Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby. (She is also a member of Isbell’s band, the 400 Unit.)From left: Shires, Maren Morris, Brandi Carlile and Natalie Hemby of the Highwomen, the supergroup Shires wanted to start after growing frustrated with the lack of women played on country radio.Jason Kempin/Getty Images North AmericaShires hasn’t always felt like herself in the recording studio, though. When they first met, Isbell said in a phone interview, “She was a great songwriter and singer, but she was terrified” after some bad experiences. “Not everybody treated her with respect,” he added, “and a lot of people made her feel small.”Even after the release of her excellent 2018 record “To the Sunset,” the thought of recording another solo album triggered such anxiety that Shires was sure she’d never make one again. She’d come to experience the studio as like being “under 2,000 magnifying glasses where you’re hearing everything you’ve ever done wrong really loud.”Rekindling her faith in recording required building trust and working with the right people. She found one of them in an unlikely collaborator, the gender-fluid, Los Angeles-based musician Lawrence Rothman, known for making bold, haunted indie-folk. Rothman, a huge fan of the Highwomen’s album, had contacted Shires out of the blue, asking her to sing backup on a new song and was shocked when Shires said yes.“I cold reached out, not expecting it to go down,” Rothman said in a phone interview. “Then we got on the phone and had such a great conversation, almost like we were long-lost relatives.” That chemistry carried over into the recording process, and eventually Shires decided she could make another record, as long as Rothman was producing.“There’s a lot of dancing now in the studio,” Shires said. “A lot of joy, occasional tears. It’s become a beautiful thing again.”Isbell said the difference is palpable: “You’re really hearing her true self on this record.”Rothman recalled the incredible scene that unfolded when Shires wrote the new album’s title track in a kind of creative trance in early January 2021. A friend had come over to the Nashville barn that Shires and Isbell converted into an all-purpose studio — strewn with instruments and the abstract canvases Shires had started painting in acrylics during the lockdown — to give Shires her first haircut in 10 months.“I was just messing around on the piano,” Rothman said, “and she’s like, ‘Wait, what is that?’” Shires leaped out of her chair — one side of her hair chopped shorter than the other — and told Rothman, “Don’t stop playing!” For the next hour, she sat on the floor in deep concentration, scribbling lines and flipping through notebooks and the index cards onto which she transcribes her best ideas. Suddenly she popped up and told Rothman to start recording a voice memo, sang the entirety of what would become “Take It Like a Man,” and sat back down to finish getting her hair cut.“And then she’s like, ‘All right, what do you think?’” Rothman recalled with an awed chuckle. “And I’m like, ‘Uh, I’ve got to digest. This is like one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.”“Take It Like a Man” is a haunting torch song that showcases both Shires’s voice — a little bit Parton, a little bit punk — and one of her strengths as a writer, the way her lines can be abstract and concrete at once. “The poetic and literal, trying to marry the two together — I think that’s what makes a great songwriter,” Rothman said. “And she’s doing that.”In Nashville, Shires is an agitator and a problem solver. “If something is wrong, it is not allowed to stay wrong,” Isbell said of his wife’s outlook. “She refuses to ignore things that she thinks are wrong, and that is a hard way to go about your day.”Shires’s idea to form the Highwomen was a direct result of realizing, while listening to countless hours of country radio on tour, how few female artists got airplay. (There’s a wonderful video online of her calling a station manager to ask why he’s not playing more women.)When Rothman, who uses they/them pronouns, came to Nashville to produce the record, they observed Shires switch into a similar mode, correcting people who misgendered them and drawing attention to gender-segregated facilities. “Over two or three months, all of a sudden the bathrooms in restaurants and the recording studios were changing to gender-neutral,” Rothman said. “She really went around town and schooled everybody, which was kind of amazing. She really made it feel welcoming and like not a big deal.”“There’s a lot of dancing now in the studio,” Shires said of how working with Lawrence Rothman shifted her perspective. “A lot of joy, occasional tears. It’s become a beautiful thing again.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesAS A SONGWRITER Shires’s musical influences are remarkably varied. On Twitter she identifies as a “Disciple of Leonard Cohen” (she also does a hell of an “I’m Your Man” cover) and posts about her admiration of Kendrick Lamar. Mixed metaphors make her skin crawl; basically anyone who appreciates the infinite power of a well-chosen word, she said, is all right by her.In 2011, she enrolled in a graduate program at Sewanee: The University of the South to get an M.F.A. in poetry. “I just needed more tools in the toolbox,” Shires said. But she believes that the degree, which she finished in 2017 after taking some time off to have Mercy, helped her become a more precise writer, better able to capture what is “vague about emotions and the human experience with as much accuracy as possible,” as she put it.That certainly includes the tough stuff. While there are a few upbeat numbers on “Take It Like a Man,” which is out July 29, a misty melancholy hangs over the majority of the record.“Empty Cups,” which features tight harmonies from Morris, is an aching chronicle of a longtime couple drifting apart. “Can you just stop with these little wars?/Can you just hold on and hope a little longer?,” Shires asks on the gorgeous, soulful ballad “Lonely at Night,” written with her friend Peter Levin. Perhaps the most devastating song, though, is “Fault Lines,” one of the first she wrote for the album, during a period when she and Isbell were navigating what she called “a disconnect.”When Isbell heard a demo of “Fault Lines,” he said, “the first thing I noticed was that it’s a very good song. Rule No. 1 with us is, if the song’s good, it goes on the record. Everything else, we’ll figure out.” (He told his version of this challenging period in their marriage on his own 2020 album, “Reunions.”)Being part of a Nashville power couple didn’t make Shires want to paint an overly rosy portrait of her relationship — just the opposite, actually. “Because we’re a married couple in love, I didn’t want folks to think that if they’re in a marriage and it doesn’t look like that, that something’s wrong with theirs,” she said. “Not like I’m trying to expose my own marriage or anything. All I’m trying to do is tell the truth that it’s hard, and that people go through disconnects and that sometimes the idea of finding your way back seems like, Why? But it’s possible.”Shires and Jason Isbell, her husband and frequent collaborator. Both musicians have written about challenging moments in their marriage.Jason Kempin/Getty ImagesIsbell plays guitar on nearly every song on the album (which was recorded live to tape in Nashville’s storied RCA Studio B) — the most brutal ones about marital difficulties, and the heartfelt “Stupid Love,” which begins with one of Shires’s sweetest lyrics: “You were smiling so much you kissed me with your teeth.”In September 2020, Shires and Isbell released a duet called “The Problem,” a stirring story song about a young couple considering an abortion; all proceeds from the song went to Alabama’s Yellowhammer Fund.Last August, while on tour in Texas with the 400 Unit, Shires began experiencing abdominal pain that she at first chose to ignore, because the pandemic had derailed live music for so long, “I was like, ‘I’m going to play music now! I don’t feel anything! I feel great!’” she recalled with a weary laugh.Then one morning she fell to the ground in pain and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors told her she had suffered an ectopic pregnancy that progressed far enough that one of her fallopian tubes had burst. (“I have a high pain tolerance,” she said, once again in deadpan.) The experience prompted her to write a piece for Rolling Stone decrying the Texas abortion ban that could have affected her treatment had it been passed just a few weeks earlier.She urged — by name — more country artists to take a stand about the then imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade. “Where are our Nashville folks?” Shires wrote. “Are they just going to sit around and drink beer? I want Garth Brooks out there telling people that women’s health is a priority. That’s what I want. Why not? What does he have to lose?”“She refuses to ignore things that she thinks are wrong,” Isbell said of Shires, “and that is a hard way to go about your day.”Eric Ryan Anderson for The New York TimesIn 2022, when success in country music is still tied to institutions like radio that don’t reward rocking the boat, being as outspoken as Shires is a big risk. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. “She’s a searcher, and that’s probably the thing that she values most in herself and other people,” Isbell said.That individualistic streak makes Shires seem like a modern-day country outlaw, applying the rugged and righteously combative spirit of elders like Shaver and Prine to the version of Nashville she finds herself inhabiting — and challenging to change. That’s the animating spirit, too, she said, behind the provocative album title “Take It Like a Man.”“To be successful as a woman working in an industry, we’re taught you’re not supposed to get emotional,” Shires said. “Don’t cry, don’t have your feelings. Be strong, show your strength, be stoic.” The song had sprung from her realization that true strength actually comes from “being vulnerable, saying your feelings, and also having the courage to just be” — which Shires certainly has in spades.“So,” she added with a fiery laugh, pointing a finger at an imaginary enemy, “how ’bout you take that like a man?” More

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      Bill Walker, Nashville Force as Conductor and Arranger, Dies at 95

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      He scored chart-topping records for country stars and later served as the musical director of “The Johnny Cash Show.”NASHVILLE — Bill Walker, a conductor and arranger who became a musical force in Nashville, scoring popular recordings for country stars like Marty Robbins and Connie Smith and serving as musical director for Johnny Cash’s primetime television variety show, died on May 26 at a rehabilitation facility near here. He was 95.His death was confirmed by his daughter-in-law Terri Walker, who said he had developed pneumonia after recent knee replacement surgery.A classically trained pianist, Mr. Walker orchestrated blockbuster hits like Eddy Arnold’s “Make the World Go Away” (1965) and Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” (1970). Both records reached No. 1 on the country chart and crossed over to the pop Top 10.He also served as arranger and conductor for, among many other recordings, Donna Fargo’s “The Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A.,” a chart-topping country single that stalled just outside the pop Top 10 in 1972.In the process he had a hand in shaping both the lush, sophisticated Nashville Sound of the 1960s and the soulful “countrypolitan” sensibility that came after it.Mr. Walker, left, in an undated photograph with Earl Poole Ball and Johnny Cash. In addition to working on “The Johnny Cash Show,” he wrote and conducted the arrangement for Mr. Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”Joseph Cates via Earl Poole BallEmpathy and elegance were his calling cards, along with a knack for plumbing the emotional heart of a song, a gift that was nowhere more evident than in his work on “Help Me Make It Through the Night.”“Take the ribbon from my hair,” Ms. Smith implores her lover as Mr. Walker’s gossamer arrangement caresses the ache in her voice.His sympathetic strings likewise lent pathos to George Jones’s lovelorn “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” a No. 1 country hit in 1980.“You are there to make the artist sound good, not to show how clever you can be,” Mr. Walker said of his philosophy of recording in a 2015 interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.“That’s how I used to do it,” he continued. “It didn’t matter if the artist was a hillbilly singer from back in the woods somewhere or Perry Como. You give them the same attention no matter what.”Mr. Walker in the early 1970s with Loretta Lynn and Ray Charles as they rehearsed for an NBC television special.Courtesy of the Country Music Hall of Fame and MuseumWilliam Alfred Walker was born on April 28, 1927, in Sydney, Australia, the eldest of three children of Alfred and Beryl (Gabb) Walker. His father was a dairy farmer, his mother a homemaker.William began playing the piano at age 5 and soon started taking private lessons. While in high school and college he performed in clubs and taught himself the rudiments of arranging by listening to popular recordings on the radio. He received his formal training at Sydney University’s Conservatorium of Music, graduating in 1955.In 1957 he moved to South Africa to become the musical director of the Johannesburg division of RCA Records, where he released 23 largely instrumental albums of pop and Latin music that featured him on piano backed by large and small ensembles.He also produced sessions for the country superstar Jim Reeves, who encouraged him to move to Nashville; Mr. Walker arrived the weekend Mr. Reeves died at 39 in a fatal plane crash, in July 1964.He started working with Mr. Arnold and helped revive the singer’s career at a time when ballad singers were being eclipsed on the country chart by artists like Buck Owens and Roger Miller, who were more attuned to up-tempo rock ’n’ roll.Mr. Walker later turned down a chance to succeed Chet Atkins as head of the Nashville office of RCA before becoming the musical director of “The Johnny Cash Show” on ABC-TV in 1969. There, he helped bring Southern culture to living rooms and dens across the country by collaborating with Mahalia Jackson, Roy Acuff, Louis Armstrong and an array of other guests.He also wrote and conducted the arrangement for Mr. Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” a live recording from the show that went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1970. Mr. Cash typically signed off each episode of his program with the salutation, “Goodnight, Mr. Walker!”After The Johnny Cash Show ended its run in 1971, Mr. Walker spent the next two decades working as an independent producer for singers like Ferlin Husky and Wanda Jackson and managing his own label, Con Brio Records. In the early ’70s he worked with Ray Charles and Loretta Lynn for an NBC television special. Mr. Walker worked with ensembles on at least four continents, including studio professionals on the East and West Coasts of the United States.via Marco MusicFrom 1991 to 1998 he was the musical director for “The Statler Brothers Show,” a popular musical variety show on the Nashville Network. He remained active as a producer and arranger into the 2000s, writing scores for TV specials and movies at a time when session musicians relied primarily on improvised, or “head,” arrangements.Mr. Walker is survived by his wife of 51 years, Jeanine (Ogletree) Walker, a former Nashville session singer; a daughter, Beth Walker; a son, Colin, from a previous marriage; his sister, Julianne Smith; his brother, Robert; and 13 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren. Two sons, Jeff and Peter, and a daughter, Lisa Gibson, all from previous marriages, died.Mr. Walker worked with ensembles on at least four continents, including studio professionals on the East and West Coasts of the United States. For the arrangements that he composed, though, he preferred the intuitive, less-is-more approach of the session musicians he first encountered in Nashville in the 1960s.“That’s the thing with Nashville players,” he said in his interview at the Country Music Hall of Fame. “They all listen to each other and they join in the licks. It’s the stuff you can’t write. You can only give them the idea and let them go with it.” More

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      Nashvile 2022 Visitors’ Guide

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      With the opening of a big African American music museum, new retro bowling halls and a ramped-up food scene, Nashville just kept on growing over the last two years. A visitors’ guide.As the weather warms, travelers anxious to get back to honky-tonkin’ in Nashville can expect not only to find things much as they were prepandemic — Tootsies Orchid Lounge, Legends Corner and Robert’s Western World are still cranking out boisterous fun along Lower Broadway — but also a vertiginous number of new restaurants, hotels and music venues. They will also find one of the most impactful music museums to open anywhere in decades: the National Museum of African American Music.There were losses, of course, such as the closing of Douglas Corner, the well-known music venue, and Rotier’s Restaurant, but venerated country music draws like the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry House and the small-but-mighty singer/songwriter venue, The Bluebird Cafe, made it through, as did most Nashville restaurants.Indeed, according to the Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp. (NCVC) the city added a staggering 197 new restaurants, bars and coffee shops; a couple of jazzy retro bowling alleys; and 23 hotels in 2020 and 2021.“I think we are one of the very few destinations that kept building while everything was shut down,” said Deana Ivey, the president of the NCVC. “We have more music, more restaurants, more hotels and a growing arts and fashion scene. If the early numbers we’ve received for March are correct, then March will be the best month in the city’s history.” As an indicator, she said, the preliminary number for hotel rooms sold in March 2022 was 7.6 percent higher than March 2019.Currently, according to the NCVC, vaccination and masking requirements are being left up to businesses, and a number of music venues are requiring proof of a negative Covid-19 test, so visitors should contact those venues directly.From left, James Lee Jr., his sons Cy and Brooks, and Mr. Lee’s wife, Asha, listen to music at one of the hands-on exhibits at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville.William DeShazer for The New York TimesCulture and revelryNashville’s newest cultural gem, the National Museum of African American Music (NMAAM), opened last year at the long-planned 5th + Broadway, a complex of restaurants, shops, offices and residential space across the street from the Ryman Auditorium. The museum aims to tell the comprehensive story of African American music’s influence on American culture. Museum designers have done a noteworthy job of laying out the intersectionality of varying genres in the 56,000-square-foot facility where videos of musicians are in constant rotation.Numerous artifacts on display include B.B. King’s guitar “Lucille,” George Clinton’s wig and robe, and a microphone used by Billie Holiday. Storytelling is partitioned into six main rooms, five dedicated to specific genres, including R&B, hip-hop, gospel, jazz and blues, with rock ’n’ roll mingled throughout. The main gallery, Rivers of Rhythm, ties it all together within the context of American history. The museum also informs visitors that Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard and Etta James all spent time singing and playing in Nashville.Nashville has two new venues — Brooklyn Bowl Nashville (above) and Eastside Bowl — that combine bowling with live music and a restaurant-bar scene.William DeShazer for The New York TimesIn the revelry lane, Nashville now has two venues with a common theme, Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, in the Germantown neighborhood, and Eastside Bowl, in Madison. Both claim a stylish 1970s décor and vibe that combine bowling with a restaurant/bar/music experience. The music venue at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, based on the original Brooklyn Bowl in, well, Brooklyn, seats 1,200. Jimmy Fallon hopped onstage in February to join the local Grateful Dead cover band The Stolen Faces, and Grand Ole Opry’s new inductee, Lauren Alaina, recently played; Neko Case is scheduled for August.Over in Madison, Eastside Bowl, which seats 750, is also bringing in respected talent. The singer-songwriter Joshua Hedley performed in April, and the Steepwater Band rockers are scheduled for May. Eastside Bowl has regular bowling and “HyperBowling,” a cross between pinball and bowling with a reactive bumper used to navigate the ball. The food includes the much-missed shepherd’s pie from the Family Wash, an Eastside institution that closed in 2018.The French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten developed the concept for the new restaurant Druisie & Darr at the recently renovated Hermitage Hotel.William DeShazer for The New York TimesEat and sleepNashville fans coming back to the city for the first time in two years will find a food scene still ramping up at breakneck speed with the chef and founder of Husk, Sean Brock, doing some heavy lifting. In 2020, he opened Joyland, a burgers and fried chicken joint, and, on the other end of the spectrum, the Continental, an old-school, fine-dining restaurant in the new Grand Hyatt Nashville. Recent dishes there included tilefish with crispy potatoes, leeks and watercress, and an unforgettable whipped rice pudding with lemon dulce de leche and rice cream enveloped in a sweet crisp. Last fall, Mr. Brock launched his flagship restaurant, Audrey, in East Nashville, which centers on his Appalachian roots; upstairs his high-concept restaurant, June, is where he hosts “The Nashville Sessions,” which highlight tasting menus created by notable chefs.Other renowned chefs are finding a place in Nashville. The French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten developed the concept for the new restaurant Druisie & Darr at the recently renovated Hermitage Hotel, and the James Beard Award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini has brought in Music City outposts of New York’s The Dutch and Carne Mare, both at the newly installed hotel W Nashville in the Gulch neighborhood. Others are adding on; RJ Cooper, also a James Beard winner, launched Acqua, next door to his swanky Saint Stephen in Germantown last month.A Nashville favorite, the Elliston Place Soda Shop, is back on the scene after recently relocating.William DeShazer for The New York TimesA slice of coconut meringue pie at Elliston Place Soda Shop.William DeShazer for The New York TimesFor both locals and travelers, the opening of a second Pancake Pantry downtown is relieving fans of having to wait in line at the Hillsboro Village location for the shop’s made-from-scratch flapjacks (their heavenly sweet potato pancakes with cinnamon-cream syrup come to mind). Similarly, the much-applauded Arnold’s Country Kitchen on 8th Avenue South now has a night and weekend schedule to accommodate the usual crush of meat-and-three fans. Cheering things up on the West End Corridor is the historic and colorful Elliston Place Soda Shop, back after relocating to 2105 Elliston Place. The ice-cream shop had been in operation for over 80 years right next door, and now has a polished-up menu, a full bar and, you guessed it, a stage for live music.Certainly, there won’t be a dearth of accommodations for visitors any time soon. The city added 4,248 hotel rooms over the last two years. The 130-room, hipster-forward Moxy Nashville Vanderbilt is the first hotel ever to open in cozy Hillsboro Village, and the massive new luxury monolith, the Grand Hyatt Nashville, downtown has one of the highest rooftop bars in the city, along with seven restaurants.Travel Trends That Will Define 2022Card 1 of 7Looking ahead. More

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      Hargus Robbins, Pianist on Country Music Hits, Dies at 84

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      A revered member of Nashville’s A-Team of studio musicians, he was a major contributor to Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde” album.NASHVILLE — Hargus “Pig” Robbins, one of country music’s most prolific session piano players and a key contributor to Bob Dylan’s landmark 1966 album, “Blonde on Blonde,” died on Sunday. He was 84.His death was announced on the website of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. It did not say where he died or specify the cause.A longtime member of Nashville’s so-called A-Team of first-call studio musicians, Mr. Robbins appeared on thousands of popular recordings made here between the late 1950s and mid-2010s.Many became No. 1 country singles, including Hank Snow’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” (1962), Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind)” (1966) and Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” (1974). Several also crossed over to become major pop hits, Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces” (1961) and Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler” (1978) among them.An instinctive melodicist who valued understatement over flash, Mr. Robbins helped establish the piano as an integral part of the smooth, uncluttered Nashville Sound of the 1960s. He also was a big reason that folk and rock acts like Joan Baez and Mr. Dylan began traveling to Nashville to adopt the impromptu approach to recording popularized here.The former Kingston Trio member John Stewart referred to him as “first-take Hargus Robbins” when, on the closing track of Mr. Stewart’s acclaimed 1969 album, “California Bloodlines,” he listed the Nashville session musicians who appeared on it. Mr. Stewart was acknowledging Mr. Robbins’s knack for playing musical passages flawlessly the first time through.Mr. Robbins’s influence was maybe most pronounced as the Nashville Sound evolved into the more soul-steeped “countrypolitan” style heard on records like George Jones’s 1980 blockbuster single, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”Mr. Robbins’s rippling, jazz-inflected intros to Charlie Rich’s “Behind Closed Doors” (1973) and Crystal Gayle’s “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (1977) became enduring expressions of the Southern musical vernacular of their era. Both records were No. 1 country and crossover pop singles.“Of all the musicians on my sessions, he stood the tallest,” the producer and A-Team guitarist Jerry Kennedy said of Mr. Robbins in an exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame.“He has been a backbone for Nashville,” added Mr. Kennedy, who worked with Mr. Robbins on hits by Roger Miller and Jerry Lee Lewis, and on “Blonde on Blonde.”Mr. Robbins acquired his distinctive nickname, Pig, while attending the Tennessee School for the Blind in Nashville as a boy.“I had a supervisor who called me that because I used to sneak in through a fire escape and play when I wasn’t supposed to and I’d get dirty as a pig,” Mr. Robbins said in an interview cited in the Encyclopedia of Country Music.He lost vision in one of his eyes when he was 3, after accidentally poking himself in the eye with a knife. The injured eye was ultimately removed and Mr. Robbins eventually lost sight in his other eye as well.While at the School for the Blind he studied classical music, but he would also play jazz, honky-tonk and barrelhouse blues.Mr. Robbins’s wide-ranging tastes served him well, equipping him for work on soul recordings like Clyde McPhatter’s 1962 pop hit, “Lover Please” (where he was inscrutably credited as Mel “Pigue” Robbins), andArthur Alexander’s “Anna (Go to Him),” a Top 10 R&B single from 1962 covered by the Beatles.Afforded the chance to stretch out stylistically on “Blonde on Blonde,” Mr. Robbins played with raucous abandon on “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35,” the woozy, carnivalesque No. 2 pop hit hooked by the tagline “Everybody must get stoned.” He employed a tender lyricism, by contrast, on elegiac ballads like “Just Like a Woman” and “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”Hargus Melvin Robbins was born on Jan. 18, 1938, in Spring City, Tenn. His first big break came in 1959 when the music publisher Buddy Killen secured him an invitation to play on Mr. Jones’s “White Lightning.” Spurred by Mr. Robbins’s rollicking boogie-woogie piano, the record became a No. 1 country single.Another opportunity came two years later, when the producer Owen Bradley, needing someone to fill in for the A-Team pianist Floyd Cramer, hired Mr. Robbins to play on the session for Ms. Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.” Mr. Cramer soon embarked on a solo career, creating an opening for Mr. Robbins on the A-Team.Mr. Robbins flirted with a solo career in the ’50s, recording rockabilly originals under the name Mel Robbins. “Save It,” an obscure single from 1959, was covered by the garage-punks the Cramps on their 1983 album, “Off the Bone.”One of Mr. Robbins’s instrumental albums, “Country Instrumentalist of the Year,” won a Grammy Award for best country instrumental performance in 1978.Working as a session musician was nevertheless his stock in trade, as a scene from Robert Altman’s 1971 movie “Nashville” memorably attests. Upbraiding his recording engineer when a hippie piano player nicknamed Frog shows up to work on their session instead of Mr. Robbins, the narcissistic country singer played by Henry Gibson shouts, “When I ask for Pig, I want Pig!”Mr. Robbins performing at the Country Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2012.Wade Payne/Invision, via Associated PressMr. Robbins was named country instrumentalist of the year by the Country Music Association in 1976 and 2000. Even after he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2012, he continued — then in his 70s — to do studio work with latter-day hitmakers like Miranda Lambert and Sturgill Simpson.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Losing his eyesight may or may not have helped Mr. Robbins cultivate a keener musical sensibility. His playing, in any case, revealed a commitment to listening and imagination that had him responding to his collaborators with a singular depth of feeling.“Pig Robbins is the best session man I’ve ever known,” said Charlie McCoy, a fellow A-Teamer, at a reception held in Mr. Robbins’s honor at the Country Music Hall of Fame. “Anytime Pig’s on a session everyone else plays better.”“If you’re going to be a good player,” Mr. Robbins said at the event, “you have to come up with something that will complement the song and the singer.” More

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      Beegie Adair, a Jazz Master in Country Music’s Capital, Dies at 84

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      In a city defined by honky-tonks and string ties, she had a 60-year career as a jazz pianist and a mainstay of the local scene.Beegie Adair, whose status as a renowned jazz pianist was all the more noteworthy for the place where she built her career — Nashville, the home of country music — died on Jan. 23 at her residence in Franklin, Tenn. She was 84.Monica Ramey, her manager and frequent vocal partner, confirmed the death. She did not provide a cause but said Ms. Adair had been in failing health.If you happened to live in Nashville and found yourself more a fan of Cole Porter than Porter Waggoner, chances are you came across Ms. Adair at some point in her six-decade career. Starting in the early 1960s, she could be found at least once a week playing at the Carousel, a downtown nightclub, or later at F. Scott’s, a restaurant in the Green Hills neighborhood.Being a jazz musician in Nashville is something like being a surfer in Las Vegas, and those who make it need flexibility and hustle — qualities Ms. Adair possessed in surplus.She played hotel lobbies and retirement homes. She and her husband, Billy Adair, wrote jingles for television commercials. And she was in constant demand as a session musician, appearing on more than 100 albums by a wide range of artists, including Dolly Parton, Henry Mancini, and Mama Cass Elliot.“She was omnipresent,” Roger Spencer, who played bass in the Beegie Adair Trio, said in an interview. “If there was an opportunity to play, she was there.”Ms. Adair mostly played American songbook standards, with a restrained, relaxed technique. She adapted to the venue: If it was a restaurant, she receded to the background; in a club, she could dominate the room.“I’ve played with her in just about every kind of musical setting you can play in Nashville over the years,” George Tidwell, a veteran Nashville jazz trumpeter, said in an interview. “And I never played anything where I didn’t think she was the right person to do it.”She released her first album, “Escape to New York,” in 1991. A few years later she formed her trio, with Mr. Spencer on bass and Chris Brown on drums. They toured frequently, including trips to Tokyo and London. Starting in 2011, they played annual gigs at Birdland, in Midtown Manhattan, and later added regular shows at Feinstein’s/54 Below, also in Midtown. They recorded 35 albums and, according to Ms. Ramey, sold some two million copies over the last four decades.Back home, Ms. Adair was the de facto leader of Nashville’s jazz scene, especially during a rough stretch in the 1970s and ’80s when venues closed and gigs were few. What kept her going was the knowledge, not always obvious to the outside observer, that the scene was larger than it seemed, with musicians playing country for the money and jazz for themselves, even if it meant nothing more than jam sessions in someone’s basement.“There are a lot of wonderful jazz players here that don’t get heard often because they’re doing studio work all of the time,” she told The Nashville Banner in 1997. “Every horn player that does studio work is probably a jazz player underneath their skin.”In addition to working steadily as a jazz pianist, Ms. Adair was in constant demand as a session musician.via Adair Music GroupBobbe Gorin Long was born on Dec. 11, 1937, in Cave City, Ky., a small town about halfway between Nashville and Louisville. She began taking piano lessons at 5 and by her teenage years was playing in clubs in Tennessee and Kentucky.Her parents, Bobbe (Martin) Long and Arthur Long, ran a gas station, where young Bobbe also worked when she wasn’t playing piano. To differentiate her from her mother, her father called her “B.G.,” after her first two initials, and the nickname stuck.Ms. Adair graduated with a degree in music education from Western Kentucky University in 1958. After teaching music for three years in Owensboro, Ky., she moved to Nashville for graduate studies in education at Peabody College, now a part of Vanderbilt University.But she was already building a career as a musician in the city’s downtown clubs, especially along Printers Alley, then and now a center of Nashville nightlife. By 1963 she had dropped out of Peabody to play music full time.Ms. Adair came under the wing of the saxophonist Boots Randolph, a resident musician at the Carousel best known for his 1963 hit “Yakety Sax.” He got her gigs and introduced her to the city’s many producers and studio managers, who, though they mostly recorded country and rock ’n’ roll, were always looking for talented, dependable session musicians.Another local music luminary, the guitarist and producer Chet Atkins, was the first to bring her on as a regular at his recording sessions, and his recommendations brought her a steady stream of work in and out of the studio. She played in the house band for “The Johnny Cash Show” and for the local TV host Ralph Emery (who also died this month).She married Mr. Adair in 1974. He died in 2014. No immediate family members survive.Mr. Adair was a prolific musician in his own right, and he built a career as an instructor, eventually becoming a professor at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music. In 1995, the couple joined Mr. Spencer and his wife, Lori Mechem, to start the Nashville Jazz Workshop.The workshop trained a new generation of jazz musicians in Nashville, and in recent decades the scene there has started to make a comeback, with its former students starting to win national recognition. In 2016, Ms. Adair and her trio were invited to play Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York. “The best thing of all for us was that there were a lot of our fans from Nashville in attendance,” she told The Nashville Scene in 2016, a few days after the show. “I think our appearance there is another indicator that people all over the country recognize that there are great jazz musicians here, and that there is an audience for the music.” More

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      Dan Einstein, Champion of Singer-Songwriters, Is Dead at 61

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      He operated independent record labels for John Prine and Steve Goodman that took a critically praised (and award-winning) artist-driven approach.NASHVILLE — Dan Einstein, a Grammy-winning independent record producer who championed the careers of John Prine and Steve Goodman, died here on Jan. 15. He was 61.His death, in a hospice facility, was confirmed by his wife of 27 years, Ellen Krause Einstein, who did not cite a cause.Most people in Nashville knew Mr. Einstein as the proprietor, with his wife, of Sweet 16th, the award-winning bakery they opened in 2004. But he had previously made his mark, in the 1980s and ’90s, as an independent record label operator who forsook corporate wisdom about economies of scale in favor of a smaller, more artist-driven approach to making records that proved feasible as well as garnering critical acclaim.Having dropped out of U.C.L.A. in the early ’80s after his studies were eclipsed by his work with the campus concerts committee, Mr. Einstein became a partner with the Los Angeles-based company Al Bunetta Management, where he helped launch and run two successful musician-owned record labels.The first of them, Oh Boy Records, was the brainchild of the singer-songwriter John Prine, who, after parting ways with Asylum Records in 1980, had grown disenchanted with the commodification and excesses of major-label culture. The other imprint, Red Pajamas Records, was started by the singer-songwriter Steve Goodman, who died of leukemia in 1984. (Mr. Prine died of Covid-19 in 2020, Mr. Bunetta of cancer in 2015.)The two labels promptly won Grammy Awards. Red Pajamas won in 1987 for “A Tribute to Steve Goodman,” a multi-artist anthology co-produced by Mr. Einstein, and in 1988 for “Unfinished Business,” a posthumously released collection of Mr. Goodman’s music, also produced by Mr. Einstein. In 1992 Mr. Prine won the first of his four Grammys with Oh Boy for “The Missing Years.” (He also won a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2020.) All three were honored in the best contemporary folk album category.Oh Boy and Red Pajamas were of course not the only successful independent labels at the time. What was different was the resolutely antediluvian way Mr. Einstein, who by 1993 was based in Nashville, approached things before the advent of the modern internet.Employing a boutique model without the benefit of major-label distribution, he and Mr. Bunetta relied on mail-order sales, grass-roots marketing and innovative consumer engagement. They included comment cards with the orders they filled, inviting buyers to rate albums and offer feedback on packaging and artwork.They also worked with artists who had left major labels for small independents, disregarding the usual trajectory in which performers are incubated at niche labels before graduating to big conglomerates and the money and prestige they promise (but only sometimes deliver).“In the middle ’80s, the idea of running a label for an artist with actual traction seemed crazy,” the music journalist Holly Gleason, who worked as a publicist for Mr. Prine in the ’90s, wrote in a eulogy for Mr. Einstein.“John Prine — or Steve Goodman — were nationally known,” she continued. “Major accounts weren’t going to deal with a handful of titles here, a new release with maybe 100 copies there. And yet, with the customer cards and mail-order business, Oh Boy and Red Pajamas were making it work.”In the process, the two labels became precursors of the human-scale, do-it-yourself entrepreneurship embraced by the Americana and alternative country movements of the late 1980s and beyond.Mr. Einstein in 2021. Most people in Nashville knew him as the proprietor, with his wife, of an award-winning bakery, but he first made his mark in the record business.Ellen EinsteinDaniel LeVine Einstein was born on Dec. 11, 1960, in New Haven, Conn., and grew up in New London, some 50 miles to the east. His father, Lloyd Theodore Einstein, known as Ted, was a physicist who helped invent the Sonar systems for nuclear submarines for the Navy. His mother, Nedra LeVine Einstein, was a schoolteacher.The family moved to Los Angeles in 1978, two years after Mr. Einstein’s mother’s death from cancer.While at U.C.L.A., Mr. Einstein became immersed in Los Angeles’s vibrant punk-rock scene. He frequented clubs like Madame Wong’s and the Masque and soon began promoting shows, which opened doors to his partnerships with Mr. Bunetta, Mr. Goodman and Mr. Prine.Besides his wife, Mr. Einstein is survived by his stepmother, Beverly Kaplan Einstein, and two sisters, Susan Richman and Loryn van den Berg.When Mr. Einstein left Oh Boy to open Sweet 16th, his entrepreneurship and affability translated seamlessly to his new venture.Referring to themselves, tongue in cheek, as “your East Nashville sugar dealer,” the Einsteins earned accolades for their baked goods from the likes of Southern Living and Glamour. And in 2021 they were named East Nashvillians of the Year by the magazine The East Nashvillian for their community-mindedness and generosity: Their hospitality extended both to hungry neighbors unable to afford the price of their award-winning breakfast sandwich and to those who had lost homes when tornadoes ravaged Nashville in 2020. More

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      Ralph Emery, the Dick Clark of Country Music, Dies at 88

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      For six decades he promoted country performers on radio and television, earning a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame.NASHVILLE — Ralph Emery, the M.C. widely regarded as the most popular radio and television broadcast personality in the history of country music, died on Saturday at a hospital here. He was 88.His death, after a brief illness, was confirmed by his wife of 54 years, Joy Kott Emery.Heralded by turns as the dean of country music broadcasters and the Dick Clark of country music, Mr. Emery spent more than six decades on the air promoting country music and seeking to broaden its appeal among audiences with no natural affinity with rural Southern culture.He first made his mark in 1957 after signing on to work the graveyard shift at Nashville’s WSM, home of the Grand Ole Opry. A 50,000-watt radio station known as the “Air Castle of the South,” WSM could be heard throughout the Southern and Eastern United States — and, on clear nights, well beyond them.Only 24 at the time, Mr. Emery immediately distinguished himself at WSM as a low-key host with an intimate, easygoing on-air presence. His informal, open-door policy on the show encouraged his guests, both established and aspiring, to drop by the studio unannounced to chat, drink coffee and spin their latest records.“Ralph was more a grand conversationalist than a calculated interviewer, and it was his conversations that revealed the humor and humanity of Tom T. Hall, Barbara Mandrell, Tex Ritter, Marty Robbins and many more,” said Kyle Young, chief executive of the Country Music Hall of Fame, in a statement. “Above all, he believed in music and in the people who make it.”From 1957 to 1972, some of country’s biggest stars, including Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, made impromptu appearances on Mr. Emery’s show, its most devoted followers perhaps being the cross-country truckers it kept awake as they made their all-night runs.Mr. Emery, right, with Reba McEntire in 2007 during a break in his interview show on the RFD-TV cable channel. Over the years, he interviewed country music’s biggest stars.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressMr. Emery’s early success on WSM also led to a concurrent slot as an announcer on the Grand Ole Opry, as well as a role as host of “Opry Almanac,” an Opry-themed television broadcast on WSMV later billed as “The Ralph Emery Show.”One uncharacteristically fraught exception to Mr. Emery’s otherwise affable tenure at WSM came in 1968 when the pioneering country-rock band the Byrds were guests on his show.The group’s new album, “Sweetheart of the Rodeo,” unabashedly expressed their devotion to traditional country music, even to the point of recruiting some of Nashville’s first-call session musicians to play on the record. The Byrds’s performance on the Opry before going on Mr. Emery’s show, though, was greeted with a cool reception from the audience after they decided to perform one of their originals instead of the Merle Haggard song they assured the show’s management they would play.None too impressed with their hippie take on country music, Mr. Emery likewise gave the Byrds the cold shoulder. Gram Parsons and Roger McGuinn of the Byrds responded in kind by writing “Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man,” a merciless sendup in which they characterized the song’s protagonist (a thinly veiled version of Mr. Emery) as a hidebound Southerner.This inauspicious clash with the counterculture notwithstanding, Mr. Emery continued to flourish within country music with “The Ralph Emery Show.” An early morning television broadcast that ran on WSMV from 1972 to 1991, the program featured a live band and earned a reputation for developing unsung talent like Lorrie Morgan and the Judds.A man of unflagging energy, Mr. Emery also hosted the nationally syndicated weekly TV series “Pop Goes the Country” from 1974 to 1980, before reaching what might have been his peak in popularity as the host of “Nashville Now.” A prime-time broadcast that aired weeknights on the Nashville Network from 1983 to 1993, “Nashville Now” for years featured a Muppet-like co-host named Shotgun Red, played by the comedian and voice-over artist Steve Hall.Mr. Emery, right, presented Loretta Lynn and Marty Robbins with plaques proclaiming them WSM’s top female and male vocalists in 1969.Dale Ernsberger/The Tennessean, Nashville Tennessean, via ImagnWalter Ralph Emery was born on March 10, 1933, in McEwen, Tenn., 50 miles or so west of Nashville, the only child of Walter and Maxine (Fuqua) Emery.His father, who suffered from alcoholism, was an accountant. His mother, who struggled with poor mental health, worked as a stenographer and at other jobs to pay the bills. Young Ralph’s happiest childhood moments were spent on his grandparents’ farm.Radio likewise proved an escape from childhood trauma — Mr. Emery’s “surrogate family,” as he put it in the first of two memoirs, “Memories” (written with Tom Carter), if not a career path.After his parents divorced, Mr. Emery worked as an usher in a Nashville movie theater. He also stocked groceries in a local Kroger store, paying his way through the Tennessee School of Broadcasting.“I practiced and practiced, in school and at home, talking and listening real hard to myself to rid my speech of its horrendous regionalism,” Mr. Emery said in an interview for his bio for the Country Music Hall of Fame.Perhaps inevitably, Mr. Emery tried his hand at recording with “Hello Fool,” an answer record to Faron Young’s “Hello Walls” that reached the country Top 10 in 1961. He also made an album, “Songs for Children” (1989), with Shotgun Red, his co-host from “Nashville Now.”Mr. Emery, right, was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007 with, from left, Mel Tillis and Vince Gill.John Russell/Country Music Hall of Fame, via Associated PressMr. Emery also appeared in several B-movies, including “Nashville Rebel” and the “Girl from Tobacco Row,” both from 1966.Mr. Emery continued to host country-themed programming into the 2000s, perhaps most notably, “Ralph Emery Live,” a TV production, later renamed “Ralph Emery’s Memories,” that aired on cable from 2007 to 2015.Mr. Emery was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and into the National Radio Hall of Fame three years later.Besides his wife, he is survived by three sons, Steve, Michael and Kit, five grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Mr. Emery was married several times, including a brief union with the singer Skeeter Davis from 1960 to 1964.“I’ve always tried to bring respect to country music,” he said in his bio for the Country Music Hall of Fame. “I’ll be very content if people can look on me and say, ‘He brought dignity to his craft,’ or, ‘He brought class to the business.’” More

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      Stonewall Jackson, Grand Ole Opry Star for Over 60 Years, Dies at 89

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      His biggest record, “Waterloo,” topped the country music chart for five weeks in 1959 and became a crossover hit.NASHVILLE — Stonewall Jackson, the honky-tonk singer who overcame an abusive, hardscrabble childhood and went on to enjoy a long, successful career in country music, including more than 60 years as a member of the cast of the Grand Ole Opry, died on Saturday in Nashville. He was 89.His death, after struggling with vascular dementia, was announced by the Opry. In the book “From the Bottom Up: The Stonewall Jackson Story as Told in His Own Words” (1991), Mr. Jackson said his stepfather, a short-tempered sharecropper named James Leviner, had often abused him, once hoisting him high above his head and dashing him against a rock.Another time, Mr. Jackson wrote, his stepfather beat him and left him lying senseless in a field after the boy accidentally spilled a bucket of water that he had been carrying.“The physical scars and pain of being abused don’t last long,” Mr. Jackson said, “but the mental part of it goes on and on and on.”Mr. Jackson’s 1962 recording “A Wound Time Can’t Erase,” a Top 10 country hit written by Bill D. Johnson, called to mind this early trauma.“Is it power you’ve won for the things that you’ve done? What you’ve gained I guess I’ll never see,” Mr. Jackson wonders aloud, his heartache set to the record’s chugging rhythms and uncluttered production.“A Wound Time Can’t Erase” was the 11th in a string of 23 consecutive singles that reached the country Top 40 for Mr. Jackson from 1958 to 1965. He later had a run of eight consecutive Top 40 country hits from 1966 to 1968, and ultimately placed 44 singles on the country charts before the hits stopped coming in 1973.“Waterloo,” a catchy ditty written by John D. Loudermilk and Marijohn Wilkin, was his biggest record, occupying the top spot on the country chart for five weeks in 1959 and crossing over to the pop Top 10. “B.J. the D.J.,” his other No. 1 country single, began its run up the charts toward the end of 1963.Most of Mr. Jackson’s recordings were made in the traditional style known as hard country: a lean, shuffling sound accented by keening fiddle and steel guitar. Eleven of his singles, including “Life to Go,” a prisoner’s lament written by George Jones, and “I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water,” a Top 20 pop hit for Johnny Rivers in 1966, reached the country Top 10.Mr. Jackson in 1999 performing at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. He was in the cast of the Grand Ole Opry for more than 60 years.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressStonewall Jackson was born on Nov. 6, 1932, in Tabor City, N.C. His biological father, a railroad engineer named Waymond David Jackson, wanted him to be named after Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, the Confederate general from whom he claimed to have been descended, but he died of complications of a hernia before Stonewall, the third of his three boys, was born.Mr. Jackson’s mother, who was born Lulu Loraine Turner, remarried after his father died.Fearing for their safety, Mr. Jackson’s mother eventually left her sons’ abusive stepfather and moved the family to Georgia, where they lived in a shack on the farm of the boys’ paternal grandmother and her husband. Stonewall was working in the fields and cutting timber there before he reached the age of 10.Hoping to escape the drudgery of sharecropping, Mr. Jackson, who received only a limited education, lied about his age and joined the Army when he was 16. He was discharged as soon as the deception was discovered.The next year, he enlisted in the Navy, where he served on the submarine rescue vessel Kittiwake and began honing his skills as a guitar player and songwriter. Four years later, he returned to Georgia to farm a small plot before moving to Nashville to try his luck as a songwriter.His many hit records notwithstanding, Mr. Jackson’s biggest claim to fame was his six-decade run on the Grand Ole Opry. He remains the only singer to have been invited to join the Opry cast before releasing a record, much less having a hit.Mr. Jackson, who lived in Brentwood, Tenn., recalled that in 1956, during his first visit to Nashville, he presented himself unannounced at the offices of Acuff-Rose Music in hopes of securing a songwriting deal. Wesley Rose, the son of Fred Rose, the Acuff-Rose executive who gave Hank Williams his start, invited Mr. Jackson to make a demo recording and was impressed with the results.“He called WSM, the radio station that owns and operates the Grand Ole Opry, and told them about me,” Mr. Jackson was quoted as saying in the liner notes to the 1972 compilation “The World of Stonewall Jackson.” “He asked if they would set up an audition for me the next day and asked if I’d like to try out for the Opry.”In 2007, Mr. Jackson’s relationship with the show soured when he sued Gaylord Entertainment, the Opry’s parent company, for age discrimination after his appearances on the program were curtailed to make room for younger artists. The lawsuit was settled, for an undisclosed amount, in October 2008, and Mr. Jackson resumed performing on the show.His wife, Juanita Wair Jackson, died in 2019. Survivors include a son, Stonewall Jr., and two grandchildren. More