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Country Music History Quotes

Country Music History Quotes

They Said It

"You don't know ol' Hank. Hank don't just have one beer."

- Hank Williams refusing a beer with lunch on the day of his first recording session, 194614

"I always said I look like a woman but think like a man."


- Dolly Parton15

"I don't have skin hang-ups. I'm no color. I'm just Charley Pride, the man."


- Charley Pride, the African-American country artist who recorded 29 chart-topping singles in his career16

"If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars."


- Attributed to Sun Records head Sam Phillips (who found just that man when he became the first to record Elvis Presley), early 1950s17

"My life would make a damn good country song."


- Jerry Lee Lewis, country music's lord of excess and greatest wildman, 197518

"They told me to be nice. I don't know what they meant."


- Waylon Jennings, "outlaw" country icon, 197519

"The program is morally good."


- From a flyer advertising a performance by the Carter Family20

"After half a century of condescension, neglect and even ridicule, country in all its guises—bluegrass, heart songs, western ballads, rural blues, delta white soul, Memphis honky-tonk and of course the familiar pop hybrid known as the Nashville Sound—is in the midst of an astronomic growth and gives no signs of stopping."


- Time magazine, 197421