Country Music

Jimmie Dale Gilmore is walking toward the exit of the NBC-TV studio in Burbank following his appearance on "The Tonight Show" when he runs into Kevin Eubanks, the guitarist in the show's house band. Eubanks praises the singer's performance, saying that the resident musicians always enjoy listening to a guest who does "the real thing."

This Saturday at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival in Indio, the Mavericks will make their first bona-fide concert appearance in nearly seven years. The show by the revered and genre-defying band is being billed as a reunion and constitutes one of the marquee special facets of this year's festival in the desert. It's also a standout moment for the band, whose members are coming back together after a turbulent career run that began with a rewarding string of albums and singles in the '90s but ended in frustration when their label dropped them and the group disbanded.

Ralph Mooney, the influential steel guitarist whose crisp, melodically rich and rhythmically buoyant sound bolstered dozens of country music hits by artists including Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart and Wanda Jackson before he joined Waylon Jennings' band for a 20-year stint, has died. He was 82. Mooney died Sunday at his home in Kennedale, Texas, of complications from cancer, said his wife, Wanda. Although he had slowed down in recent years, he still played and recorded periodically until near the end of his life.

Members of the International Submarine Band chose a name for their new group that practically ensured it would never rise above cult status, and sure enough, that band disappeared with barely a trace after making a handful of recordings in the mid-1960s. But after ISB members Gram Parsons and Chris Ethridge teamed up with ex-Byrds singer and songwriter Chris Hillman and steel guitarist Pete Kleinow, the pioneering country-rock group the Flying Burrito Brothers was born and the ISB won permanent footnote status in the history of pop music.

Transformed overnight into the nation's live country music capital, Branson is fast becoming more city than country. The boom has meant money and jobs but has created problems that residents didn't have to consider just a couple of years ago--traffic jams, higher prices, a strained sewage system and development spilling into the countryside. "Around here we've always had a saying: 'You can't have enough good neighbors,' " said Mike Brittain, a farmer from nearby Kirbyville.

Tim McGraw's "Indian Outlaw" is the fastest-rising country single on the pop charts since Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart" in 1992, but not everyone is celebrating. Two country radio stations in Minneapolis are refusing to play the song after complaints that some of the lyrics are offensive to Native Americans.

When I mentioned to Bob Dylan during an interview in the late 1970s that I was going to Nashville to see Waylon Jennings, Dylan said, "I love Waylon. Why don't you get him to record one of my songs?" I thought the often enigmatic Dylan was kidding, but when I saw him again three years later, the first thing he asked was, "What ever happened with Waylon?" In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised by Dylan's affection.

Philip Matthew Hannan Cleric gave the eulogy for President Kennedy Retired New Orleans Archbishop Philip Matthew Hannan, 98, who sought to console a grieving nation in his eulogy for President Kennedy, died Thursday in New Orleans after a long period of decline, according to the archdiocese. Hannan was a young auxiliary bishop in Washington, D.C., when Jacqueline Kennedy asked him to deliver her husband's eulogy at the state funeral held three days after the president's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

DWIGHT YOAKAM is not driving the tractor, he's just sitting on it, hunkered all alone under a bright blue sky tinged with a hint of encroaching twilight. Wearing faded overalls and a red Shell trucker cap, he gazes pensively at a sprawling modern ranch house off to his right. Beyond him are fields crosshatched by white picket fences, dotted with oak trees and ringed by shadowy mountains.

Keith Whitley, who battled a drinking problem while becoming one of the brightest young stars in country music, was found dead at his home here Tuesday of accidental acute alcohol poisoning, officials said. He was 33. "This is an accidental death," Davidson County Medical Examiner Charles Harlan said after an autopsy. "Mr. Whitley died as a result of drinking alcohol." Harlan said Whitley's blood alcohol content registered .47, nearly five times the legal definition of intoxication.

The records that brothers Ira and Charlie Louvin made in the 1950s and early '60s are some of the most revered and influential in the history of country music. The songs, many of them written by the Alabama-born siblings, have been widely recorded by succeeding generations of singers; their distinctive harmonies on songs such as "I Don't Believe You've Met My Baby," "When I Stop Dreaming," "If I Could Only Win Your Love," "Every Time You Leave" and "Don't Laugh" created a template that strongly affected groups from the Everly Brothers to the Beatles and the Byrds, to the Judds and forward to Lady Antebellum.

Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum has scored an early holiday gift in the form of a $10-million pledge from the Country Music Assn. that will go toward the museum's ambitious $75-million expansion campaign, officials announced Tuesday. It is the largest single gift in the nonprofit museum's history. The Hall of Fame is in the midst of efforts to more than double its size from the current 140,000-square-foot building to what is planned as a 350,000-square-foot facility that will include an 800-seat performance space that will be called the CMA Theater.

A list of upcoming concerts across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses. Empire Polo Club Stagecoach Country Music Festival, April 27-29 (Fri.) Staples Center Bob Seger, Dec. 28 (Sat.) Hollywood Palladium Sebastian Ingrosso, Dec. 10 (Wed.); Wilco, Jan. 24 (Fri.) Citizens Business Bank Arena Avenged Sevenfold, Dec. 17 (Sat.) Gibson Amphitheatre Gabriel Iglesias, Dec. 30 (Fri.) Pantages Theatre The Cure, Nov. 21-23 (Mon.)

Hank Williams Jr. is apologizing for using an analogy to Adolf Hitler in discussing President Barack Obama that prompted ESPN to pull his classic intro song to "Monday Night Football. " Williams said in a statement posted on Facebook and his website Tuesday that his passion for politics and sports "got the best or worst of me. " In an interview Monday on Fox News' "Fox & Friends," Williams, unprompted, said of Obama's outing on the links with House Speaker John Boehner : "It'd be like Hitler playing golf with [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ]

Philip Matthew Hannan Cleric gave the eulogy for President Kennedy Retired New Orleans Archbishop Philip Matthew Hannan, 98, who sought to console a grieving nation in his eulogy for President Kennedy, died Thursday in New Orleans after a long period of decline, according to the archdiocese. Hannan was a young auxiliary bishop in Washington, D.C., when Jacqueline Kennedy asked him to deliver her husband's eulogy at the state funeral held three days after the president's assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

Born on a mountain farm near Weaverville, N.C., in 1907, Wade Mainer soaked up old songs ringing in the far hills and hollers. As a professional singer and banjo player, he would introduce that music to audiences throughout the nation and also pass it on to new generations of performers. Mainer, one of the most popular and influential figures in early country music, died Sept. 12 at his home in Flint, Mich. He was 104. Some called him "the godfather of North Carolina country music" and "the grandfather of bluegrass.

Band Members Eulogized: Johnny Cash, at the invitation of Reba McEntire, delivered the eulogy at a memorial service Thursday in Nashville for seven members of McEntire's country music band who were killed last weekend in a plane crash near San Diego. McEntire sat with 100 members of the victims' families, but did not participate. About 800 mourners, including many country music stars, attended the hourlong tribute.

After Zac Brown chose to sing "Martin," a love song to his guitar, everyone on stage with him Tuesday night at Club Nokia for this year's Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum benefit concert quickly fell in line and served up songs inspired by their own instruments. No surprise there: All musicians have a story about their first instrument. At this annual round-robin "guitar pull" session, rooted in a Nashville living-room music tradition widely credited to Johnny Cash and June Carter, the symbiotic connection between musicians and their tools is a fundamental one. That relationship is more palpable than ever since last year's flooding ravaged the country music capital and damaged or destroyed an untold number of instruments precious to those who not only earn a living with them, but who use them to express their deepest feelings.

Brian J. O'Connell, Live Nation's president of country touring, stood in the frantic backstage at the CMT Music Awards in June, smiling. "You realize," he said, "there are four country stadium shows going on this weekend. " O'Connell wasn't hyping. In addition to the Country Music Assn.'s annual CMA Music Festival, which packs Nashville's LP Field for four consecutive nights, Kenny Chesney was performing at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.; Brad Paisley was taking over Progressive Field in Cleveland; and Taylor Swift was standing room only at Ford Field in Detroit.