Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

Today, we remember the legendary Geroge Jones on the anniversary of his passing. Did you know? He was one of the first artists to record “Tennessee Whiskey.”

“Scroll down to the end of the article to listen to music.”
Introduction

Picture this: you’re sitting on a porch swing, the sun dipping low, casting a warm golden glow over the rolling Tennessee hills. There’s a glass of whiskey in your hand, smooth as a summer breeze, and Chris Stapleton’s Tennessee Whiskey is playing softly in the background. That’s the vibe this song bottles up—a soulful, slow-burn love letter to both a lover and the spirit of the South. It’s not just a song; it’s a feeling, like wrapping yourself in a worn-in leather jacket that fits just right.

Released in 2015 on Stapleton’s debut album Traveller, Tennessee Whiskey is a masterclass in blending genres. It’s country, but it’s got this deep, smoky soul that feels like it could’ve been born in a Memphis juke joint. The song was written by Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove, but Stapleton makes it his own with that gravelly voice that sounds like it’s been aged in an oak barrel. It’s no wonder it went platinum and became a staple at weddings, bars, and late-night drives.

What makes it hit so hard? It’s the way it captures love in its rawest form. When Chris sings, “You’re as smooth as Tennessee whiskey, you’re as sweet as strawberry wine,” it’s like he’s confessing something sacred. The lyrics compare love to the finest things—whiskey, wine, even moonlight—and who hasn’t felt that kind of intoxication when they’re head over heels? It’s universal, but it feels personal, like he’s singing straight to you. Plus, that melody? It sways like a slow dance, pulling you in until you’re lost in it.

The story behind the song is just as rich. Originally a country tune recorded by David Allan Coe and later George Jones, Stapleton and producer Dave Cobb reimagined it with a bluesy, soulful edge, drawing inspiration from Etta James’ I’d Rather Go Blind. They recorded it in Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, and you can almost hear the ghosts of music legends in the room. It’s a song that bridges eras, tying the past to the present with every note.

Why does it stick with us? Maybe it’s because Tennessee Whiskey feels like a moment of truth. It’s about finding someone who steadies you, who warms you like a good drink on a cold night. It’s about the South, sure, but it’s also about anyone who’s ever been saved by love—or a damn good song. So, next time you hear it, crank it up, close your eyes, and let it take you somewhere warm. What’s your whiskey moment?

Video

Lyrics

I used to spend my nights out in a barroom
Liquor was the only love I’ve known
But you rescued me from reaching for the bottle
And you brought me back from being too far gone
You’re as smooth as Tennessee whiskey
You’re as sweet as strawberry wine
You’re as warm as a glass of brandy
And I stay stoned on your love all the time
I look for love in all the same old places
Found the bottom of the bottle always dry
But when you poured out your heart, I didn’t waste it
‘Cause there nothing like your love to gettin’ me high
You’re as smooth as Tennessee whiskey
You’re as sweet as strawberry wine
You’re as warm as a glass of brandy
And I stay stoned on your love all the time
I stay stoned on your love all the time

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AT NEWPORT IN 1964, JOHNNY CASH HANDED BOB DYLAN ONE OF HIS OWN MARTIN GUITARS. IT WAS MORE THAN A GIFT BETWEEN TWO STARS — IT WAS A COUNTRY MUSIC GIANT PUBLICLY TELLING THE FOLK WORLD, “I HEAR WHAT YOU’RE DOING.” By then, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan had already been listening to each other from a distance. Dylan admired Cash’s Sun recordings from the 1950s. Cash, meanwhile, had become obsessed with *The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan*, playing it repeatedly on the road until a correspondence began between the two men. They came from different corners of American music, but both were writing songs about outsiders, hard lives and people who rarely occupied the center of popular culture. Their friendship solidified at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Cash was already a major country star, but instead of treating the folk revival as a separate world, he stepped directly into it. During his Newport set, he sang Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Dylan later described hearing Cash perform one of his songs as a tremendous thrill. Then came the quieter gesture. During a hotel-room jam, Cash gave Dylan a treasured Martin guitar. The Country Music Hall of Fame describes it as a symbol of respect and admiration, while photographer Jim Marshall’s archive identifies the exchange as an old country gesture between musicians. The relationship quickly moved beyond friendship. A few months later, Cash and June Carter recorded Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” taking one of his songs into the country market. Then, beginning in 1966, Dylan himself came to Nashville, where the city’s session musicians helped shape *Blonde on Blonde*. He returned for *John Wesley Harding* and *Nashville Skyline*, helping change the way outsiders viewed Nashville as a recording center. By 1969, the connection had come full circle. When *The Johnny Cash Show* premiered nationally from Nashville, Dylan was among the first guests. Cash used the program to place country figures such as Bill Monroe alongside artists from folk and rock, creating one of the era’s most unusual musical meeting places on network television. The Martin guitar did not single-handedly create that exchange. But it captured the spirit of what was happening. Long before “country-rock” became an easy label, one of Nashville’s biggest stars had already reached across the boundary, put his own instrument into another songwriter’s hands, and treated the music on the other side as something worth carrying home.

Country Music

RONNIE MILSAP WAS HEADED TOWARD LAW SCHOOL WHEN RAY CHARLES HEARD HIM PLAY AND TOLD HIM NOT TO WALK AWAY FROM THE MUSIC ALREADY INSIDE HIM. By then, Milsap had spent most of his childhood at North Carolina’s state school for the blind, where classical piano and violin were part of his education even as country, gospel, rhythm and blues slipped into his world through late-night radio. He later remembered counselors warning that trying to become a professional musician could leave him dependent on the state, advice that pushed practicality against the one thing he already knew how to do exceptionally well. After graduating in 1962, Milsap studied pre-law at Young Harris College and had a path toward continuing his education, but music kept pulling him elsewhere. While still a student, he met Ray Charles, his musical hero, and Charles encouraged him to trust that instinct rather than abandon it for a safer profession. Milsap’s own official biography remembers the advice simply: Charles could hear the music inside him. The decision did not deliver Nashville immediately. Milsap spent the next several years moving through Atlanta clubs, soul and R&B sessions, small labels and eventually Memphis, where he worked around Chips Moman’s American Studio and played piano on Elvis Presley’s “Kentucky Rain.” By the early 1970s he had already touched several corners of American popular music without yet finding the career that would define him. Charley Pride eventually urged him toward Nashville, and on December 26, 1972, Milsap arrived to headline the showroom at the King of the Road Hotel. The response was immediate enough that he had a manager within weeks and was recording for RCA within three months. What followed was not a narrow country career. Milsap carried soul phrasing, pop instincts and piano-driven arrangements into country radio, eventually scoring thirty-five Billboard No. 1 country hits while crossing repeatedly into pop and adult contemporary audiences. The safer path had once pointed toward law. The one he chose instead helped broaden what mainstream country could sound like in the 1970s and 1980s.

Country Music

BY 1972, THE PROBLEM WASN’T JUST NASHVILLE. WAYLON JENNINGS WAS SICK WITH HEPATITIS, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN DEBT, PAYING ALIMONY TO THREE EX-WIVES—AND SERIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT QUITTING MUSIC. Waylon had been successful enough to look established from the outside. He had RCA albums, Top 10 records, a Grammy, and years of touring behind him. But the economics underneath were ugly. His road operation was losing money, he owed large sums, the IRS was circling, and the harder he worked, the less control he seemed to have over the records carrying his name. Then his body stopped cooperating. In 1972, Waylon came down with hepatitis after a performance trip to New Mexico and ended up seriously ill. Lying there, unable to keep running from one show to the next, he began taking stock of what years of success had actually bought him. The answer was not much. His health was damaged. His personal life had already gone through three failed marriages. He was deep in debt, and RCA still largely dictated the machinery around his recordings. For a moment, quitting no longer sounded dramatic. It sounded practical. Instead, Waylon changed who was fighting for him. He fired longtime manager Lucky Moeller and brought in Neil Reshen, a New York manager with little interest in Nashville etiquette. Reshen began attacking the contracts and accounting arrangements that Waylon had spent years accepting. The result was the opening Waylon had been waiting for. RCA eventually granted him much greater control over his recordings—choice of songs, musicians, studios and production. In 1973, *Lonesome, On’ry and Mean* and *Honky Tonk Heroes* followed, with the latter built heavily around Billy Joe Shaver’s songs. The records sounded less like Nashville was arranging Waylon and more like Waylon was finally arranging himself. Within a few years, the same artist who had considered walking away was at the center of country music’s outlaw boom. The important turn did not happen under stage lights. It happened while Waylon was sick enough to stop moving—and finally had time to ask why being successful was still leaving him broke, exhausted, and making records he did not fully control.

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AT NEWPORT IN 1964, JOHNNY CASH HANDED BOB DYLAN ONE OF HIS OWN MARTIN GUITARS. IT WAS MORE THAN A GIFT BETWEEN TWO STARS — IT WAS A COUNTRY MUSIC GIANT PUBLICLY TELLING THE FOLK WORLD, “I HEAR WHAT YOU’RE DOING.” By then, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan had already been listening to each other from a distance. Dylan admired Cash’s Sun recordings from the 1950s. Cash, meanwhile, had become obsessed with *The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan*, playing it repeatedly on the road until a correspondence began between the two men. They came from different corners of American music, but both were writing songs about outsiders, hard lives and people who rarely occupied the center of popular culture. Their friendship solidified at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964. Cash was already a major country star, but instead of treating the folk revival as a separate world, he stepped directly into it. During his Newport set, he sang Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Dylan later described hearing Cash perform one of his songs as a tremendous thrill. Then came the quieter gesture. During a hotel-room jam, Cash gave Dylan a treasured Martin guitar. The Country Music Hall of Fame describes it as a symbol of respect and admiration, while photographer Jim Marshall’s archive identifies the exchange as an old country gesture between musicians. The relationship quickly moved beyond friendship. A few months later, Cash and June Carter recorded Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” taking one of his songs into the country market. Then, beginning in 1966, Dylan himself came to Nashville, where the city’s session musicians helped shape *Blonde on Blonde*. He returned for *John Wesley Harding* and *Nashville Skyline*, helping change the way outsiders viewed Nashville as a recording center. By 1969, the connection had come full circle. When *The Johnny Cash Show* premiered nationally from Nashville, Dylan was among the first guests. Cash used the program to place country figures such as Bill Monroe alongside artists from folk and rock, creating one of the era’s most unusual musical meeting places on network television. The Martin guitar did not single-handedly create that exchange. But it captured the spirit of what was happening. Long before “country-rock” became an easy label, one of Nashville’s biggest stars had already reached across the boundary, put his own instrument into another songwriter’s hands, and treated the music on the other side as something worth carrying home.

Country Music

RONNIE MILSAP WAS HEADED TOWARD LAW SCHOOL WHEN RAY CHARLES HEARD HIM PLAY AND TOLD HIM NOT TO WALK AWAY FROM THE MUSIC ALREADY INSIDE HIM. By then, Milsap had spent most of his childhood at North Carolina’s state school for the blind, where classical piano and violin were part of his education even as country, gospel, rhythm and blues slipped into his world through late-night radio. He later remembered counselors warning that trying to become a professional musician could leave him dependent on the state, advice that pushed practicality against the one thing he already knew how to do exceptionally well. After graduating in 1962, Milsap studied pre-law at Young Harris College and had a path toward continuing his education, but music kept pulling him elsewhere. While still a student, he met Ray Charles, his musical hero, and Charles encouraged him to trust that instinct rather than abandon it for a safer profession. Milsap’s own official biography remembers the advice simply: Charles could hear the music inside him. The decision did not deliver Nashville immediately. Milsap spent the next several years moving through Atlanta clubs, soul and R&B sessions, small labels and eventually Memphis, where he worked around Chips Moman’s American Studio and played piano on Elvis Presley’s “Kentucky Rain.” By the early 1970s he had already touched several corners of American popular music without yet finding the career that would define him. Charley Pride eventually urged him toward Nashville, and on December 26, 1972, Milsap arrived to headline the showroom at the King of the Road Hotel. The response was immediate enough that he had a manager within weeks and was recording for RCA within three months. What followed was not a narrow country career. Milsap carried soul phrasing, pop instincts and piano-driven arrangements into country radio, eventually scoring thirty-five Billboard No. 1 country hits while crossing repeatedly into pop and adult contemporary audiences. The safer path had once pointed toward law. The one he chose instead helped broaden what mainstream country could sound like in the 1970s and 1980s.

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BY 1972, THE PROBLEM WASN’T JUST NASHVILLE. WAYLON JENNINGS WAS SICK WITH HEPATITIS, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN DEBT, PAYING ALIMONY TO THREE EX-WIVES—AND SERIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT QUITTING MUSIC. Waylon had been successful enough to look established from the outside. He had RCA albums, Top 10 records, a Grammy, and years of touring behind him. But the economics underneath were ugly. His road operation was losing money, he owed large sums, the IRS was circling, and the harder he worked, the less control he seemed to have over the records carrying his name. Then his body stopped cooperating. In 1972, Waylon came down with hepatitis after a performance trip to New Mexico and ended up seriously ill. Lying there, unable to keep running from one show to the next, he began taking stock of what years of success had actually bought him. The answer was not much. His health was damaged. His personal life had already gone through three failed marriages. He was deep in debt, and RCA still largely dictated the machinery around his recordings. For a moment, quitting no longer sounded dramatic. It sounded practical. Instead, Waylon changed who was fighting for him. He fired longtime manager Lucky Moeller and brought in Neil Reshen, a New York manager with little interest in Nashville etiquette. Reshen began attacking the contracts and accounting arrangements that Waylon had spent years accepting. The result was the opening Waylon had been waiting for. RCA eventually granted him much greater control over his recordings—choice of songs, musicians, studios and production. In 1973, *Lonesome, On’ry and Mean* and *Honky Tonk Heroes* followed, with the latter built heavily around Billy Joe Shaver’s songs. The records sounded less like Nashville was arranging Waylon and more like Waylon was finally arranging himself. Within a few years, the same artist who had considered walking away was at the center of country music’s outlaw boom. The important turn did not happen under stage lights. It happened while Waylon was sick enough to stop moving—and finally had time to ask why being successful was still leaving him broke, exhausted, and making records he did not fully control.

Country Music

TAMMY WYNETTE SPENT YEARS SINGING ABOUT HEARTBREAK WHILE HER OWN BODY WAS BREAKING DOWN. SHE ENDURED ABOUT 20 OPERATIONS, REPEATED HOSPITAL STAYS AND CHRONIC PAIN — YET KEPT GOING BACK ONSTAGE. By the 1970s, Tammy Wynette had already become the “First Lady of Country Music.” “Stand by Your Man,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “I Don’t Wanna Play House” had made her one of the defining female voices of the era. She was also living through turbulent marriages, constant touring and a schedule that left little room for a body already beginning to fail her. The health problems were not minor. Over the years, Wynette underwent repeated abdominal operations and suffered from chronic intestinal and gallbladder problems. The Washington Post later summarized her medical history as roughly 20 operations, alongside repeated illness and hospitalizations. Pain became part of daily life. So did medication. What began as treatment for serious physical problems eventually contributed to a dependence on prescription painkillers, adding another private struggle to a life already being lived in public. And yet the career kept moving. Wynette continued recording, touring and appearing on television through much of the period. By the end of the 1980s, she had accumulated twenty No. 1 singles and sold more than 30 million records. That contrast became part of the way audiences saw her. Onstage, she remained polished, controlled and unmistakably Tammy Wynette. Offstage, there were surgeries, hospital rooms, pain and stretches when simply getting through another engagement required far more effort than the audience could see. The later years did not become easier. Wynette continued dealing with serious health issues until her death in 1998 at age 55 from a blood clot in her lungs. Her career is often remembered through songs about women surviving marriages, betrayal and disappointment. But by the final decades of her life, survival had become much more literal: not a theme in the lyric, but the practical work of getting through another operation, another recovery and another night under the lights.