Monte Warden and the Wagoneers

On his Facebook page, Monte noted "Doghouse Flowers" had already enjoyed 11 weeks on the Americana Music Association's charts. The jump-up-and-holler air these Texas Hall of Famers kick out is deftly offset by melancholic "Yesterday Stopped By." Monte and Wagoneers have trod the Opry stage 15 times previously, and are set to galvanize future diehards there.

Videos: "Doghouse Flowers"   "Yesterday Stopped By"

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Patsy Cline

American Country Legend

(Sun Label Group LLC)

Per the Country Hall of Fame site, Patsy was killed in the same tragic 1963 plane crash that took pilot Randy Hughes, as well as her fellow Opry stars Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas. She was without equal as a stylist, whether emoting sonorously in torch balladry or snapping her fringed cowgirl skirt with wink and beaming grin. Produced by Owen Bradley, "Lovesick Blues" is but one cut featuring Hank Garland, Floyd Cramer, Grady Martin, and Buddy Harman rattling Nashville studio tiles.

It's both testament to Miss Patsy's lofty status and cursed injustice that in 2026, elevator speakers blare her immortal soundings in voiceless, annoying muzak manifestations.

Recommended: "Walkin' After Midnight," "Too Many Secrets," "Stop the World (I Want to Get Off)," "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye," "I'm Blue Again," "Honky Tonk Merry-Go-Round," "I Cried All the Way to the Altar," "Lovesick Blues," "Cry Not for Me"

Videos: "Too Many Secrets"   "A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye"   "I'm Blue Again"   "Lovesick Blues"

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Back in the Day, 1967

Jimmy Gateley

"Don't Come Cryin' to Me" b/w "It Tears My Heart Out"

(Decca)

Exhaustive enumeration of fiddler/singer/guitarist/songsmith Jimmy's big name, Classic Country credits would defy present space constraints. Red Foley, Harold Morrison, and Connie Smith are three. Bill Anderson is four. Gateley joined with the Nudie-spangled "Whisperer," appearing on hits like "Bright Lights and Country Music" (which Gateley co-wrote with Anderson), and also leading the star's band on the Opry stage for 13 years. 

Jimmy and Bill perform "Bright Lights" in 1966 budget film "Las Vegas Hillbillys," which starred Ferlin Husky, Mamie Van Doren, and Don Bowman. Other performers shown included Roy Drusky, Sonny James, Del Reeves, and Wilma Burgess.

"Jimmy was the only band member I ever hired who was older than me, and I learned so much from him," Anderson wrote on the Ask Bill page of his website, in 2021. "He had been a cast member on the Red Foley Ozark Jubilee TV shows before moving to Nashville, and he was so much wiser about the ins-and-outs of the music business than I was. I wore him out asking questions, but in his calm, understated way he graciously (and often humorously) answered them all."

"Don't Come Cryin' to Me" offers the steel-fueled bounce, impeccable background harmonies, and hard-knocks testimony that has long endeared Classic Country to millions the world over. Its sadder-but-wiser protagonist is one with whom real folks can identify. In its brevity, its spartanness, the song imprints soundly.

Flip "It Tears My Heart Out" downshifts, favoring lowercase demonstrativeness. Players assembled accomodate with tuneful tastefulness. Foamy suds assume distinctiveness, when salty tears take swims.

Among songs Gateleyy penned for others was "The Minute You're Gone From Me," which landed Sonny James on charts.

In later years, Jimmy turned eyes upward, became Deacon of a Tennessee church, and recorded Gospel. A heart condition claimed him in 1985. He was but 53.

"He was a great guy, extremely talented, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t remember something he said or did and it always makes me smile," Bill wrote.

Videos: "Don't Come Cryin' to Me"   "It Tears My Heart Out"

Discogs

Country Music Hall of Fame

The Rock and Country Encyclopedia and Discography

Back In the Day, 1959

Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper

The Big Wheel   

(Hickory)

They sported no costly finery, the folks who hailed Wilma as "The First Lady of Bluegrass," just farmland work-duds and faded housedresses. (Though they got slickered-up for Sunday preaching and barndances.)  Her humble 1930's West Virginia origin - she sang Gospel with her family - led first to radio, next to a decade with Wheeling's WWVA-AM,  and eventually to that desired destination of all musically-turned clod-kickers: the Opry boards. Along that road, she turned her hand to several common-folks music machines. And at her side was git-up fiddler Dale T. "Stoney" Cooper, whom she had espoused in 1941. The two-made-one produced homespun Gospel profound, invigorating, and of timeless reward. Calloused steppers enthused.

Recommended: "There's a Big Wheel," "Canadian Reel," "Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill," "Big Midnight Special," "Each Season Changes You," "Home Sweet Home," "He Taught Them How"

Video: "There's a Big Wheel"  "Big Midnight Special"    "He Taught Them How"

Discogs

Amazon

Back In the Day, 1965

Del Reeves

...Sings Girl On the Billboard   LP

(United Artists Records)

Bird-dogging may be less conspicuous now than in Opry icon Del's heyday, but biological compulsions endure unmitigated. (Without them, I wouldn't be writing these words and you wouldn't be reading them.) Winking tracks loped in a season when flirtations were acknowledged as compliments. (Del followed this with the jocular "Women Do Funny Things To Me.") The steer-horned and chrome-festooned drop-top in which Del's chuckling rakishness cruised was as first-chair as any Nashville offered. Such was their Country-fried succulence that these songs populated innumerable truck stop jukes. (On Amazon, the unopened platter is priced at $201.00.) 

"They say that hemlines are gonna be much shorter this year / That sounds like mighty sweet music to my ear. I wouldn't have you to thinkin' I'm the wrong kinda guy / I just sorta got an eye  for the finer things in life."

Recommended: "Girl On the Billboard," "Eyes Don't Come Crying To Me," "Strangers," "Three-Time Loser," "Nothing To Write Home About," "Belles of Southern Bell," "I've Got a Tiger By the Tail," "I'm a Long Way From Home," "The Race Is On"

Video: "Girl On the Billboard" / "Belles of the Southern Bell" (live on 1965 TV)

Discogs

Amazon

last.fm