Emmylou, Statlers To Country Hall Of Fame

Emmylou Harris, Tom T. Hall, Virginia's Statler Brothers and the late Ernest "Pop" Stoneman will become the newest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Their upcoming induction, which takes place later this year, was announced Tuesday in Nashville.

Harris will be the fourth artist included in the "Career Achieved National Prominence Between 1975 and the Present" category, which was created in 2005. Due to a tie, both Hall and the Statler Brothers will be inducted in the "Career Achieved National Prominence Between World War II and 1975" category.

Harris, a Birmingham, Ala., native who first became known for her duet work with Gram Parsons in the 1970s, was called one of the most revered song interpreters on the planet by Tammy Genovese, CEO of the Country Music Association.

After Parsons' death in 1973, Harris began a successful solo career that spanned across pop, country rock and Americana and earned her 12 Grammys. Her most commercially successful album was a 1987 project with Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton called "Trio."

"I've been thinking about this incredible journey I've been on and how I've been blessed," Harris said. "It's wonderful to be a member of this place that holds so much reverence for me."

The Statler Brothers, originally from Staunton, Va., were first hired as a vocal backing group by Johnny Cash and had their first hit in 1965 with "Flowers On The Wall," for which they won a Grammy. They had several more Top 40 hits through the 1970s and 1980s, including "The Class of '57," "Do You Know You Are My Sunshine," and "I'll Go To My Grave Loving You."

"We feel like we're in rarified air here, we never expected to be here," said Don Reid, who with Harold was one of the only two brothers in the group. "We always looked at the Hall of Fame as a place where our heroes were."

Tom T. Hall, originally from Olive Hall, Ky., is best known as a songwriter who jumpstarted his solo career following Jeannie C. Reilly's No. 1 hit with his "Harper Valley PTA."

As a versatile writer and performer, Hall was a top touring and radio act in the '70s and has written children's songs, several novels and produced a PBS special on bluegrass.

Tex Ritter once called Hall a "storyteller," and the tag stuck.

"It's very spiritual," Hall said of the honor. "I'm delighted to be standing where I am today."

Traditionally, the Country Music Association inducts one recipient in three separate categories of career achievement: Between 1975 and present, between World War II and 1975, and pre-WWII.

But this year there was a tie in the voting for the period between WWII and 1975, so both Hall and the Statler Brothers will be inducted in that category.

Stoneman, a Galax, Va., native who died in 1968, wrote and recorded one of the biggest hits of the 1920s, "The Sinking of the Titanic." It was one of the first country records to sell more than a million copies and began a string of recordings through the '20s with his wife and family members.

He helped convince record producer Ralph Peer, a Hall of Fame member, to go to the Bristol area on the Tennessee-Virginia border and hold recording sessions that are widely considered a watershed in country music.

Many of the "hillbilly" records released before these sessions were recorded in New York by crossover artists, and the Bristol recordings of the Stonemans, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers marked the beginning of commercial country music industry.

"Johnny Cash called it the Big Bang of country music," Grand Ole Opry announcer and historian Eddie Stubbs said of the Bristol sessions. "If this is so, then Ernest Stoneman lit the match for it all."