March 14 — The final showing of Live From The Grand Ole Opry on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) occurs on this night. The show actually went beyond the televised segment, but the show was ended with a clip of Marty Robbins singing "El Paso" (a song he used to close out his Opry segment at midnight) from the year before. Because of cost over-runs and other technicalities, this was the final run for the annual show on PBS that featured the music of Tom T. Hall, Del Reeves, Hank Snow, Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl, and many other performers.
October — The Weekly Country Music Countdown, a three-hour weekly countdown program, debuts. The syndicated program, hosted by radio personality Chris Charles, features the top 30 country hits of the week as reported by Radio & Records magazine. The program is a success and the first country music-oriented countdown program to successfully rival the 8-year-old American Country Countdown show.
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The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music, an eight-volume, 143-track collection, is released. The box set is considered one of the first important retrospectives of the genre and contains extensive liner notes, depicting the importance of each song or artist included. Songs included range from 1922's "Sally Gooden" to 1975's "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" by Willie Nelson. Specifically, each volume is titled as follows: "1920's," "1930's Southeast," "1930's Southwest," "1941–1953" (two records), "1953–1963," "Bluegrass" and "1963–1975."
Also during the year, the Franklin Mint, as part of its volume series of significant musical recordings, begins issuing a series of country music-focused two-record sets. "The Greatest Country Music Recordings of All Time" will eventually spawn 50 different album sets through 1986 (each new volume issued roughly every other month), with each two-album set focusing on a different era, performer or style, topic and so forth, and each volume will have extensive liner notes and vintage photographs.
Kingsbury, Paul, "The Grand Ole Opry: History of Country Music. 70 Years of the Songs, the Stars and the Stories," Villard Books, Random House; Opryland USA, 1995
Kingsbury, Paul, "Vinyl Hayride: Country Music Album Covers 1947–1989," Country Music Foundation, 2003 (ISBN0-8118-3572-3)
Millard, Bob, "Country Music: 70 Years of America's Favorite Music," HarperCollins, New York, 1993 (ISBN0-06-273244-7)
Whitburn, Joel, "Top Country Songs 1944–2005 – 6th Edition." 2005.
