Tag: Dixie Hall

With These Women Inducted Into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Who Should Be Next?

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

For the first time in the thirty year history of the International Bluegrass Music Association a class of Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductees includes a woman in every act. The Hall of Fame, helmed by the IBMA and housed inside the Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky, infamously lacks women. Before this year’s class it included ten women, total, and only one woman — Louise Scruggs — had ever been inducted as an individual. All others had been inducted as members of bands, duos, or organizations. 

This year Alison Krauss and Lynn Morris join the rarest rank of individual female inductees, alongside influential manager Louise Scruggs. The Stonemans — including Patti, Donna, and Roni — join the likes of songwriter Dixie Hall, who was inducted with her husband, Tom T.; Polly, Miggie, and Janis of the Lewis Family; Marion Leighton Levy of the Rounder Records founders; Sara and Maybelle of the Carter Family; and Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard.

To mark the occasion, we’re celebrating women in bluegrass who certainly deserve induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, beginning with this year’s inductees. The point is, there is no dearth of women in bluegrass, from way back in its earliest days before the genre even had a name to the big-tent-bluegrass present, and many of whom are more than qualified for inclusion in this hall of honor — as innovators, ambassadors, creators, pickers, and forebears, all.

Alison Krauss 

Arguably the most well-known bluegrass musician to achieve mainstream success, Alison Krauss is a no-brainer addition to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. With her stellar collaborations — with Robert Plant, James Taylor, T Bone Burnett, and so many others — her bluegrass bona fides, her technical prowess as a fiddler, her crystalline and influential vocals, and her unparalleled skill for song interpretation she’s the perfect multi-hyphenate bluegrasser to demonstrate to veteran fans or the uninitiated passers-by what the Hall of Fame is all about. Because, no matter how far Alison Krauss may stray from bluegrass, everything she does remains firmly rooted in her ‘grassy foundations.

Lynn Morris

Lynn Morris remains a criminally underappreciated figure in bluegrass, partly due to her career being prematurely ended by a near-fatal stroke in the late 1990s. In the decades prior, this IBMA Award winner was a powerful and influential banjo player, bandleader, and community-builder, carving out a pathway to success in roots music for herself — given that no pathways were being made available to women like her. Morris’ brand of bluegrass was unflinching, driving, and gritty, and to this day it continues to defy stereotypes about what women can contribute to a music that often holds up maleness and horse race-style competition as currency. While at the same time, she retained a level of tenderness and openness rare in masculine-centered bluegrass. Hopefully this induction will spotlight Morris’ important role in bluegrass’ golden age during the ‘80s and ‘90s. “Love Grown Cold,” a semi-viral hit for Morris on many a bluegrass social media page, is merely the tip of the iceberg of what will be this Hall of Famer’s long-lasting legacy in this music.

The Stoneman Family

Ernest “Pop” Stoneman, father and figurehead of country’s legendary Stoneman family, was the man who started it all. No, literally. Pop is credited with being a keystone picker, performer, and pseudo-producer of 1927’s Bristol sessions, which later came to be considered as the “big bang of country music,” the beginning of the genre’s commercial fortunes. His family of pickers, including Donna, Roni, and Patti, became stars of stage and screen thanks to their showmanship, homespun vibes, and blistering-fast picking. The impact of this musical family on country, bluegrass, and Americana music — as a unit and as individuals — can simply not be overstated. From Hee Haw to the Grand Ole Opry to winning a CMA Award to international tours with their own group and as side musicians, the fingerprints of the Stoneman Family are all over American roots music across the globe.

Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper

At one point, Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper were perhaps the most famous bluegrass act in the world, landing several singles and tracks in Billboard’s Hot Country Chart in the ‘50s and ‘60s — notably landing four songs in the Top 10. Not on a bluegrass chart, because such a thing did not yet exist, but on the country chart! Granted, at that time bluegrass was still considered simply a subgenre of country and hillbilly music, but imagine not just one “Wagon Wheel”-level hit to their name, but a handful! And somehow, in modern times, Wilma Lee & Stoney are at best relegated to footnotes and asides. Bluegrass has always been a commercial genre and the commercial success of this pair is alone worth induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, all their other achievements and accolades notwithstanding.

Ola Belle Reed

Ola Belle Reed is more than “I’ve Endured” and more than “High on the Mountain.” A Western North Carolina songwriter and picker, Reed typified the politically- and environmentally-conscious, subversive, and grounded style of musicmaking by Appalachian women who lived through the many upheavals and uncertainties within the region and around the world during the twentieth century. Her songs, like “Tear Down the Fences,” highlight that the south, Appalachia, and the people who live there are not monoliths. Just as Reed’s catalog of influential music is not a monolith, either. Truly a glaring omission from Bluegrass’s hall of honor.

Sally Ann Forrester

Born Wilene Russell, “Sally Ann” or “Billie” Forrester — wife of fiddler Howdy Forrester — was one of only two women to have ever been members of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. (The other being Bessie Lee Maudlin, another prime candidate for Hall of Fame induction and inclusion in this list.) With the band, Forrester played accordion and sang as well as “keeping the books.” Inducting the women who were Blue Grass Boys, members of THE titular band of bluegrass, just makes sense! But with Forrester, it also represents an all-too-rare opportunity to canonize a bluegrass accordionist for the ages. Why wouldn’t we want to do that!? Take a listen to her accordion fills on “Rocky Road Blues” and just try to come up with a reason why bluegrass accordion isn’t more popular nowadays. Besides the obvious reasons.

Rose Maddox

Rose Maddox is traditionally credited as the first woman to cut a bluegrass album, recording Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass in 1962 for Capitol Records and including many a bluegrass hit, like “Footprints in the Snow.” Maddox also marked the beginning of a series of women vocalists and musicians in bluegrass who could accomplish the high lonesome sound for which men like Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, and others were famous. Women who sang old-time and country up to this point often had rounder, more full, resonant, and rich voices, where men in bluegrass were seemingly attempting to shout tenor to dog whistles. Sexists weren’t sure women could replicate that testicles-in-a-vise-grip sound, but Maddox’s powerful voice immediately commands the same attention – and respect – of the highest and most lonesome. To think there used to be a time when people actually thought (or pretended to think) women couldn’t sing bluegrass!

Elizabeth Cotten

A pillar of American folk music, Elizabeth Cotten’s influence and impact knows no bounds, reaching far from downhome blues, ragtime, and old-time and into bluegrass, folk, Americana, rock, pop, and beyond. Her songs and her playing style continue to influence bluegrass today, but Cotten’s true legacy, one that will stretch on into infinity, is that her existence stands as permission for the Other – for marginalized folks like herself, a Black, working class artisan and musician from the South – to exist and to take up space within these historically white and often forbidding and exclusive roots music communities. Elizabeth Cotten is proof positive that the contributions of Black folks to American roots musics, including if not especially bluegrass, were truly seminal, essential, and vital to the music growing and developing into the entity we all love today. Elizabeth Cotten would be an excellent and unimpeachable first Black and African American inductee into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Let’s make it happen.

Buffalo Gals

In the 1970s the group considered to be the first bluegrass lineup of all women was Buffalo Gals, including Martha Trachtenberg, Susie Monick, Carol Siegel, Sue Raines, and Nancy Josephson. Their first and only record, First Borne, is finally available digitally and via online streaming platforms, but up until recently was largely forgotten. We featured First Borne in our list of the 50 Greatest Bluegrass Albums by women and retold a now-infamous story about the Buffalo Gals performing in their sleeping bags when a festival promoter gave them a set early in the morning because, you guessed it, who would want to see women perform bluegrass!? Hearing this whimsical, zany mash-up of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Loco-motion” we’d make this group headline. Just sayin’. With bands like Della Mae and Sister Sadie enjoying success and acclaim at all levels of the IBMA, perhaps it’s time to pay tribute to the all-women lineups like the Buffalo Gals who came before and blazed the trail.

Gloria Belle

A woman for a Sunny Mountain Boy! Gloria Belle is most famous as a member of Jimmy Martin’s backing band, but it would almost be an insult to reduce her career to having spent time in the shadow of the King of Bluegrass. She was a fantastic picker, multi-instrumentalist, and singer and the first woman to ever release an album on longtime bluegrass label Rebel Records. In 1999 she received IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award after a handful of decades of nonstop recording, touring, and performing in bluegrass. She even made an appearance on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s fantastically popular Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. Another case of an underrated woman who is constantly referred to on the back end of an ampersand after a man or men, Gloria Belle is a perfect example of a woman who deserves induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame on her own merits first and foremost.

Dolly Parton

Though she’ll often refer to it simply as “mountain music,” Dolly Parton is as bluegrass as they come. Albums like The Grass Is Blue, Heartsongs, and Trio demonstrate this fact to an obvious degree, but it’s worth pointing out — especially within the context of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame — that Parton’s bluegrass runs deeper than just being an offshoot of her musical expression. With the shows and festivals at Dollywood, her collaborations with artists like the Grascals, Rhonda Vincent, and Alison Krauss, and her longtime commitment to philanthropy in her home region of East Tennessee and abroad, Dolly is the perfect example the Hall of Fame could utilize to communicate the importance and value of taking bluegrass ideals and spreading them around the world. Plus, who wouldn’t want a ticket to the IBMA Awards show at which Dolly Parton would be inducted? (Pro tip: Dolly has actually attended the IBMA Awards and performed once before, when The Grass Is Blue was nominated in 2000 and Marty Stuart hosted. Let’s please recreate that show. Please.)

We could continue this list into infinity, and that’s exactly the point. Artists and bands like Alison Brown, Laurie Lewis, Missy Raines, Kathy Kallick, Blue Rose, Emmylou Harris, The Whites, Patty Loveless, and so many others are waiting in the wings, qualified, ready, and willing to step up and thrive under the mantle of Bluegrass Hall of Fame induction. And plenty of young women, femmes, and non-binary folks are waiting to have examples to look up to, to signal to them that bluegrass can be a place where they can also make a home. The concept of a Hall of Fame may seem like an unimportant or inconsequential or self-serving enterprise at times, but it can be so much more than that! We can supply those examples. Let’s do it.

22 Top Bluegrass Duos

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Everyone knows that in the early days of bluegrass, before that term was even coined, all you needed to make a “band” was two people and two instruments. Fiddle and banjo? Sure. But in those days, they’d take whatever they could get. Duos are still a strong presence in the music today, in brother/sibling duos, spouse-led bands, and legendary collaborations.

Check out these twenty-two bluegrass pairings — and their accoutrement — on BGS:

Bill & Charlie Monroe

Before Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, made his indelible mark on the genre (quite literally giving it its name), he was already a popular performer with his brothers Charlie and Birch. Birch left The Monroe Brothers in the mid-1930s, and Charlie and Bill went on to enjoy success on the road, in the studio, and on the radio — until rising tensions and a fateful fight in 1938 caused them to split ways. But, without that fight, we may not have “bluegrass” at all.

Flatt & Scruggs

December 1945. The Ryman Auditorium. Nashville, Tennessee. Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys stepped on stage for the Grand Ole Opry with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs among their ranks for the very first time and bluegrass as we know it today was born. Flatt & Scruggs left Monroe in 1948 to join forces and went on to become one of the few ubiquitous, household names of bluegrass.

Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard

Undeniably trailblazers, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard are widely regarded as the first women in bluegrass to capture the “high lonesome” sound popularized by Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and others. They toured across the U.S., often supporting causes that benefited forgotten, downtrodden people from all backgrounds and walks of life. They were inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2017.

The Stanley Brothers

Natives of the music-rich southwest corner of Virginia, Carter and Ralph Stanley were prolific recording artists and touring musicians in bluegrass’s first generation. Countless songs written and/or popularized by the Stanley Brothers and their backing band, the Clinch Mountain Boys, are staples of the genre today. Carter passed in 1966 and Ralph continued until his death in 2016 with the Clinch Mountain Boys — who still tour today with Ralph’s son, Ralph II.

Don Reno & Red Smiley

Unsung trailblazers of the first generation of bluegrass pickers, Reno & Smiley were tireless innovators with a jovial, sometimes silly flair to their songs and instrumental prowess. Their duets are simply some of the best in all of bluegrass. The duo performed together off and on from the early 1950s to the 1970s — but both passed away much too young, Smiley in 1972 at the age of 46 and Reno in 1984 at the age of 58. Reno’s frenetic, electric and pedal steel guitar-infused licks remain unmatched in banjo picking today.

Jim & Jesse McReynolds

With matching suits and impeccable pompadours brothers Jim and Jesse McReynolds often brought rockabilly, rock ‘n’ roll, mainstream country and pop sensibilities to their take on sibling harmonies and bluegrass brother duos. Jesse’s crosspicking on the mandolin was — and continues to be — absolutely astonishing. Jim passed in 2002, Jesse continues to perform on the Grand Ole Opry to this day. At the time of this writing, he is ninety years old.

Laurie Lewis & Tom Rozum

Laurie Lewis often takes top billing — as leader of the Right Hands and before that, the Bluegrass Pals, and others — but since 1986 her musical partner Tom Rozum has almost constantly been at her side on the mandolin and harmonies. Their duo recording, The Oak and the Laurel, was nominated for a Grammy in 1995. Here is the album’s title track:

Bill Monroe & Doc Watson

What is there to say? Two of the folks who paved the way for this genre, laying a foundation so strong and far-reaching that we still can’t fully comprehend its impact. Bill and Doc collaborated on more than one occasion and we, as fans and disciples, are lucky that so many of these moments are captured in recordings and videos.

Del McCoury & David “Dawg” Grisman

At face value, an unlikely combo, but their friendship goes back to the early 1960s and their musical endeavors together began soon after. As Del slowly but surely became a bastion for traditional bluegrass aesthetics applied broadly, Dawg embraced jammy, jazzy, new acoustic sounds that sometimes only register as bluegrass-adjacent because they come from the mandolin. Opposite sides of the same coin, their duet makes total sense while at the same time challenging everything we think we know about the music. In this clip, Dawg sings tenor to Del — not many would be brave enough to try!

Ricky Skaggs & Keith Whitley

They got their start together in the Clinch Mountain Boys with Ralph Stanley, making some of the best recordings in the history of the band’s many iterations. Before they both struck out on wildly successful, mainstream careers they recorded a seminal duo album together, Second Generation. It remains one of the most important albums in the bluegrass canon — especially as far as duos/duets go.

Norman & Nancy Blake

Norman is well known for his flatpicking prowess, which has graced recordings by John Hartford, Bob Dylan, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and so many others. He and his wife, Nancy, were married in 1975 after having begun their musical forays together a year or so earlier. Nancy’s command of many instruments — cello, mandolin, and fiddle among them — balances neatly with Norman’s jaw-dropping, singular style on the flattop. Their inseparable harmonies and timeless repertoire are merely icing on the cake.

Jimmy Martin & Ralph Stanley

How their first album together, First Time Together (cough), is not more well-known is truly impossible to understand. The King of Bluegrass and the Man of Constant Sorrow twining their extraordinary voices must have been ordained by a higher power. It’s a good thing they answered the call. Be careful, Jimmy’s percussive G-runs feel like a slap in the face — in the best way.

Darrell Scott & Tim O’Brien

Their live albums together and their co-written masterpieces belong in every museum and shrine to roots music around the world. Both of these triple threat (Quadruple? Quintuple? When do we stop counting?) musicians are rampantly successful in their own right, but together they are simply transcendent. Their cut of “Brother Wind” deserves a listen right this instant and “House of Gold” gives you the harmony acrobatics gut punch you need every time. It was nearly impossible to choose just one, but here’s a hit that was recorded once by a little group called the Dixie Chicks.

Ricky Skaggs & Tony Rice

Again, words fail. Skaggs & Rice is a desert island record. Each and every time these two have graced a recording or a stage together, magic has been made, from their days with J.D. Crowe & the New South and on. We only wish that they could have done more together.

Vern & Ray

Vern Williams and Ray Park were California’s original bluegrass sons. Though they were both born and raised in Arkansas, they relocated to Stockton, California, as adults. They’re often credited with “introducing” bluegrass music to the West Coast. They disbanded in 1974 (both passed in the early 2000s), but their influence is palpable to this day, even if they’re sorely unheard of east of the Mississippi. This deserves correction! Immediately!

Eddie & Martha Adcock

Eddie is a pioneering banjo player who’s a veteran of both Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and The Country Gentlemen, two decidedly legendary and influential acts. His style is somewhat wacky, certainly singular, but effortlessly bluegrass and traditional as well. He married Martha in the late 1970s and the pair have toured prolifically as a duo. In 2008, Eddie underwent brain surgery to correct debilitating hand tremors. He was kept awake, playing the banjo during the procedure — and there is jaw-dropping film of this online!

Dailey & Vincent

When Dailey & Vincent burst onto the scene in the mid-aughts after both having notable careers as sidemen, the bluegrass community rejoiced at the reemergence of a wavering art form within the genre — traditional duo singing. However, Jamie and Darrin, whether they knew it at the time or not, had their sights set much higher. Now more of a full-blown stage show than a bluegrass band, their recordings and concerts are a high-energy, charismatic, and downright entertaining mix of classic country, Southern gospel, quartet singing, and yes, bluegrass.

Kenny & Amanda Smith

Husband and wife Kenny and Amanda first recorded together in 2001, going on to win IBMA’s Emerging Artist of the Year award two years later. They’ve now cut eight albums together, all clean, clear, crisp modern bluegrass that centers on Amanda’s impossibly bright vocals, which maintain a personal, country hue alongside Kenny’s fantastic flatpicking. SON!

Tom T. & Dixie Hall

Two of the most recent inductees into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Tom T. and Dixie Hall wrote hundreds and hundreds of songs cut by country, bluegrass, and Americana artists alike. Tom T.’s reputation and chart-topping originals tend to eclipse Dixie, but he is unyielding in his efforts to point that same spotlight at his beloved wife instead, who passed away in 2015. Though she never performed — definitely not to the extent that Tom T. did — the marks she left on bluegrass, country, and her partnership with her husband are indelible. This number was co-written by the pair:

The Louvin Brothers

Recipients of IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 1992, the Louvin Brothers are another example of early bluegrassers who enjoyed the amorphous, primordial days of the genre before it became more and more sequestered from mainstream country and country radio. Their duets are iconic, with counter-intuitive contours and lines that bands and singers still have difficulty replicating to this day. Their most famous contribution to the American music zeitgeist, though, might not be their music, but the spectacular cover art for their 1959 album, Satan Is Real. If you haven’t seen it, Google it right now.

Delia Bell & Bill Grant

Natives of Texas and Oklahoma, respectively, Delia Bell and Bill Grant met through Bell’s husband, Bobby, in the late 1950s. Between their band, the Kiamichi Mountain Boys, and their duo project they recorded more than a dozen albums together through the 1980s. Famously, Emmylou Harris became a fan when she heard their cut of “Roses in the Snow,” which Harris went on to record on her eponymous bluegrass record. Bell died in 2018.

The Osborne Brothers

Though they popularized a style of three-part harmony that had never been heard before — the infamous “high lead” harmony stack — their band, no matter who it may have included over the years, was undeniably helmed and anchored by Bobby and Sonny. (Which does explain the name.) You may remember “Rocky Top” and “Ruby” first and foremost in their discography, but the hits they’ve contributed to the bluegrass songbook are innumerable. Here’s one such classic.

12 Essential Songs by Tom T. & Miss Dixie Hall

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

She was a trick-riding horsewoman born and raised in England; he, an Army veteran born in the foothills of Appalachia. Together, they were one of the most important songwriting duos of bluegrass, country, and American roots music as a whole. This year, they were inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame together, following his induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2008. If y’all don’t know the music — and impact — of Tom T. & Miss Dixie Hall, it’s time you do. Here’s a 12-song primer that attempts to scratch the surface of their far-reaching influence.

“Truck Drivin’ Son Of A Gun” — Dave Dudley, co-written by Miss Dixie

Co-written by Miss Dixie Deen (before she became a Hall), this single, released by Dave Dudley in 1965, reached #3 on the US country charts. It earned a BMI award; Dixie and Tom T. met at that awards banquet. The rest is history.

“Fox On The Run” — Tom T. Hall

An absolute classic. Tom T. brought bluegrass to country radio in 1976, when this track reached #9 on the Billboard charts. Just one stellar track on an entire album of top-shelf bluegrass that included appearances by J.D. Crowe, Donna Stoneman, Bill Monroe, Bobby Thompson, and so many more.

“Washed My Face In The Morning Dew” — Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, written by Tom T. Hall

Recorded the year before “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” Tom T.’s first top 40 hit is still going strong, relevant as ever 51 years later. “The rich got richer and the poor got poor, and to me it just didn’t seem right.”

Here’s a version by one of country’s favorite duos of all time, Porter and Dolly.

“Old Dogs, Children, and Watermelon Wine” — Tom T. Hall

“Old Dogs” was Tom T.’s third #1 hit as an artist. Charlie Sizemore, who followed Keith Whitley as Ralph Stanley’s lead singer, led an all-star cast on an entire album of Tom T.’s songs, including this one, in 2002.


“I Flew Over Our House Last Night” — Tom T. Hall

“So close, yet so far away,” Tom T. laments, whimsically, being 30,000 feet above the one he loves as he flies over home. This one has been covered by everyone from Balsam Range to Joe Henry.

“Leaving Baker County” — Junior Sisk & Rambler’s Choice, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

There’s a sardonic glee in the chorus, leaving Baker County and the woes described herein. “I never did think much of Baker County, and every mile I’m thinking of it less.”

“A Hero In Harlan” — Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

A somber story of a little brother coming home to Harlan the one way all military families fear — in a flag-draped casket. But Tom T. and Dixie don’t glamorize or sensationalize the story, as songs on this subject matter often do. They (and Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, who first recorded the song) tell it real, raw, and relevantly.

“Lessons In Stone” — Longview, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

A 1990s bluegrass supergroup, Longview’s original members included Dudley Connell, Glen Duncan, James King, Joe Mullins, Don Rigsby, and Marshall Wilborn. Woof. Dudley, Don, and Glen give the buttery three-part on the chorus.

“Our Little World” — Darin and Brooke Aldridge, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

The way Tom T. & Miss Dixie tell it (via Darin and Brooke), you really can have it all, without needing much.

“Pretty Green Hills” — Tom T. Hall, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

These two could write a story song like almost no one else can. The level of detail might seem mundane, but with such deft pens, these two make the little things seem integral — important, minute colors and shades that make the whole picture shine.

“Someone Made the Sandals Jesus Wore” — Paul Williams and the Victory Trio, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

Paul Williams, a fellow Bluegrass Hall of Famer inducted with Tom T. & Dixie this year, sings this gospel tune with the Victory Trio. It’s a simple, but incredibly poignant message: there really is no contribution, talent, or skill that’s too small or insignificant to positively impact the lives of others.

“Somewhere In Kentucky Tonight” — Tom T. Hall, written by Tom T. & Miss Dixie

When Tom T. recorded this song on Tom T. Hall Sings Miss Dixie & Tom T., that project was a Christmas gift to his wife. His Christmas card to Dixie promised:

“We’ll record in our studio; you choose the songs and the pickers. You produce and I’ll do songs we have written together. Local and Pal will handle (canine) security. We will call the project TOM T. HALL SINGS MISS DIXIE & TOM T. Merry Christmas! Love, T.”

And if that beautiful sentiment doesn’t capture their love perfectly, the song itself truly does. What a pair. Hall of Famers, indeed.

Photo courtesy of IBMA 
Jon Weisberger and Justin Hiltner contributed to this piece.