Country Music

Classic Country Music Hits

Country Music

THEY DIDN’T SEE HIM AT FIRST — BUT IN UNDER 10 SECONDS, THE VOICE HAD ALREADY WON THE ROOM. Before anyone knew the name Charley Pride, they knew the sound. It didn’t ask permission. It didn’t explain itself. It arrived steady — already country, already sure. That’s the turn. The music went ahead of the man. You hear that certainty in Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’. No tricks. No mask. Just joy stated plainly, the way truth sounds when it doesn’t need convincing. The room caught up later. The labels followed after that. By then, it was settled. Not an exception. Not a statement. Charley Pride wasn’t waiting to be seen. He was already heard. And once the room heard him, the music had made its choice.

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Introduction

Some songs don’t ask you to overthink love. Kiss an Angel Good Morning just gives you a small, practical reminder—and somehow, that makes it unforgettable.

When Charley Pride sings this one, it feels less like advice from a stage and more like wisdom passed across a kitchen table. The message is simple: if you want the world to treat you right, start by treating the person you love with care. One kiss in the morning. One moment of intention before the day pulls you in every direction.

What made the song special—especially when it was released—was how joyfully confident it sounded. Country music had no shortage of heartbreak, but Charley leaned into happiness without apology. His warm, relaxed delivery made it feel believable, not corny. You could hear the smile in his voice, like he truly believed this little habit could make a big difference.

And for a lot of listeners, it did. The song became an anthem not because it promised perfection, but because it celebrated effort. Love isn’t grand gestures every day—it’s showing up kindly, even when you’re tired, even when life is busy.

“Kiss an Angel Good Morning” endures because it understands something timeless: happiness doesn’t always come from changing your circumstances. Sometimes it starts with a kiss, a smile, and the decision to carry love with you when you walk out the door.

Video

Lyrics

When ever I chance to meet, old friends on the street
They wonder how does a man get to be this way
Always got a smiling face, anytime and any place
And every time they ask me why I just smile and say
‘Cause you’ve got to kiss an angel good morning
And let her know you think about her when you’re gone
Kiss an angel good morning
And love her like the devil when you get back home
Though people may try to guess, the secret of our happiness
But some of them never learn it’s a simple thing
The secret I’ma speaking of, is a woman and a man in love
And the answer is in this song that I always sing
‘Cause you’ve got to kiss an angel good morning
And let her know you think about her when you’re gone
Kiss an angel good morning
And love her like the devil when you get back home
Kiss an angel good morning
And let her know you think about her when you’re gone
Kiss an angel good morning
And love her like the devil when you get back home

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Two weeks before Patsy Cline died, she handed Dottie West a scrapbook and refused to take it back. The two women had stayed awake through the night talking about their careers. Patsy was already one of country music’s biggest singers. Dottie was still trying to survive in Nashville with young children, a new baby and only two or three days of road work each month. Patsy knew how thin the money had become. Dottie’s husband, Bill West, played steel guitar, so Patsy sometimes hired him for shows even when her arrangements did not require a steel player. The extra musician was not there for the sound. He was there because the West family needed another paycheck. That night, Patsy brought out the scrapbook she had built during her rise. Inside were fan letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and music charts with her hit records circled in red. Dottie told her to keep it for her children and grandchildren. Patsy insisted that she take it. Dottie carried the book home and sent her children off to school. When she finally sat down to look through the pages, she found something Patsy had placed inside while they were talking: a check for seventy-five dollars. A short note was attached. “This will pay your rent this month.” The gift had been hidden because Patsy understood what open charity might do to the pride of another singer. She left Dottie a record of everything she had achieved, then quietly tucked the family’s immediate need between its pages. Roughly two weeks later, Dottie appeared with Patsy at the benefit concert in Kansas City that became Cline’s final performance. Dottie and Bill offered her a place in their car for the long ride back to Nashville. Patsy chose to wait for the weather and return by plane. She died on March 5, 1963. Dottie’s own break came afterward. Jim Reeves recorded one of her songs, RCA signed her, and “Here Comes My Baby” earned her country music’s first Grammy awarded to a female artist. The seventy-five dollars was soon spent. The month it purchased was enough to keep the West family beneath a Nashville roof while Dottie waited for the career Patsy believed was coming. More from the friendship inside that scrapbook—and the last journey the two women almost made together—is explored below.

Country Music

Hank Snow Ran Away to Sea at Twelve. Fifty Years Later, He Finally Told People Why. In 1926, twelve-year-old Hank Snow stepped aboard a fishing schooner off Nova Scotia and exchanged an abusive home for the North Atlantic. His parents had separated when he was eight. Two sisters were sent to foster homes, while Hank passed through a household where punishment could be severe and affection uncertain. After returning to live with his mother, he found himself under the authority of a violent stepfather. Snow later said the beatings left scars across his body. At twelve, with only a few years of schooling behind him, he chose the danger of the sea. He worked as a cabin boy on fishing vessels sailing from Lunenburg. The labor belonged to grown men: wet decks, heavy gear, cold wind and voyages that carried him away from land for weeks. He sang and played harmonica for the crew, partly for entertainment and partly to make the long hours bearable. With money earned around the docks, Snow eventually bought a mail-order T. Eaton guitar for $5.95. That inexpensive instrument helped open a road leading from Canadian radio to the Grand Ole Opry and “I’m Movin’ On,” the 1950 record that remained at No. 1 for twenty-one weeks. Success gave Snow a new name, rhinestone suits and an audience stretching far beyond Nova Scotia. It did not remove the boy from the schooner. For decades, he seldom spoke publicly about the abuse. Then, in 1978, at sixty-four, Snow established the Hank Snow International Foundation for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. He organized benefit performances, supported foster children and began telling audiences why the cause belonged to him. “I have never forgotten the abuse I received as a young boy,” he wrote. The future, he insisted, depended upon how adults treated the children living among them now. The work revealed a side of the Singing Ranger that the traveling songs could not. The man famous for leaving towns and broken relationships had spent much of his life carrying one house with him. In Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, a children’s playground was eventually dedicated on the land where his parents’ home had once stood. The house did not survive. Children laughing on its ground did.

Country Music

Before Nashville placed Lynn Anderson beneath television lights, her working world smelled of leather, dust and horses. She competed across California while her mother, Liz Anderson, waited in the stands. Liz sometimes became bored during the long horse shows. She brought paper and used the waiting hours to write. Several songs that later carried the Anderson family into country music took shape around those arenas. Liz wrote “The Fugitive,” recorded as a No. 1 hit by Merle Haggard. She wrote “Ride, Ride, Ride” and “If I Kiss You (Will You Go Away),” which became early hits for Lynn. The arrangement between mother and daughter was unusual. Liz’s writing career opened first, drawing the family toward Nashville and RCA. Lynn sang harmony on her mother’s sessions and was heard at an industry function, leading to her own contract with Chart Records. She was not entering the business by copying a famous mother’s finished career. Both careers were forming at almost the same time. Five of Lynn’s early hits were written by Liz. In 1968, they recorded “Mother May I” together and appeared on a Mother’s Day episode of The Lawrence Welk Show. Yet their paths did not remain professionally fused. Lynn moved to Columbia, recorded Joe South’s “Rose Garden” and became an international star. Liz continued writing and recording without becoming simply an appendage to her daughter’s success. Horses gave Lynn another territory of her own. She bred and showed them, traveled abroad seeking native breeds and supported therapeutic-riding work. One of her horses became a poster animal for the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association. That work began personally. At a birthday gathering for Lynn’s daughter, a six-year-old child with spina bifida was placed on one of Lynn’s horses. She watched the child respond to the height, balance and movement. Liz’s notebooks had once filled waiting time beside the arena. Lynn eventually used the animals inside it to give other children a different view of themselves. Mother and daughter entered music through the same gate. Neither remained waiting in the other’s shadow.

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In 1949, Jimmy Stewart married Gloria McLean and signed the papers that made her two young boys his sons. Twenty years later, one of them—Marine First Lieutenant Ronald McLean—was killed in Vietnam, sending a decorated World War II pilot home from another war as a grieving father. Ronald was five when Stewart entered his life; his brother Michael was three. Jimmy had spent years as one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, yet within eighteen months of the wedding, Gloria gave birth to twin daughters and he found himself raising four children. Contemporary accounts noted that Stewart made no distinction between the boys he had adopted and the daughters born to him. He called all four his children. The family name on Ronald’s documents remained McLean, but inside the house he was Jimmy’s eldest son. Ronald grew up and joined the Marine Corps. Stewart had flown more than twenty combat missions over Europe and remained in the Air Force Reserve long after Hollywood resumed. Military service was not an abstraction within their family, though nothing in Jimmy’s own record could make the waiting easier once Ronald was sent to Vietnam. On June 8, 1969, the 24-year-old lieutenant was serving with a reconnaissance unit in Quảng Trị Province. During an enemy attack, Ronald exposed himself to fire while directing his men and was killed by machine-gun fire. He was awarded the Silver Star posthumously. Gloria accepted the medal at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. Jimmy did not turn his son’s death into a public performance. When he later addressed it, he said the war had been mismanaged but necessary, then added only that the family was proud of Ronald. In the years that followed, Jimmy and Gloria returned regularly to Washington to honor him. Ronald’s name was eventually cut into the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Panel 23 West, Line 113. A reporter visiting Stewart’s study in 1980 found framed family photographs covering one wall. Among them was the honorable-service citation sent after Ronald’s death. The Oscar stayed elsewhere. The paper bearing his son’s name remained with the family pictures.

Country Music

Two weeks before Patsy Cline died, she handed Dottie West a scrapbook and refused to take it back. The two women had stayed awake through the night talking about their careers. Patsy was already one of country music’s biggest singers. Dottie was still trying to survive in Nashville with young children, a new baby and only two or three days of road work each month. Patsy knew how thin the money had become. Dottie’s husband, Bill West, played steel guitar, so Patsy sometimes hired him for shows even when her arrangements did not require a steel player. The extra musician was not there for the sound. He was there because the West family needed another paycheck. That night, Patsy brought out the scrapbook she had built during her rise. Inside were fan letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and music charts with her hit records circled in red. Dottie told her to keep it for her children and grandchildren. Patsy insisted that she take it. Dottie carried the book home and sent her children off to school. When she finally sat down to look through the pages, she found something Patsy had placed inside while they were talking: a check for seventy-five dollars. A short note was attached. “This will pay your rent this month.” The gift had been hidden because Patsy understood what open charity might do to the pride of another singer. She left Dottie a record of everything she had achieved, then quietly tucked the family’s immediate need between its pages. Roughly two weeks later, Dottie appeared with Patsy at the benefit concert in Kansas City that became Cline’s final performance. Dottie and Bill offered her a place in their car for the long ride back to Nashville. Patsy chose to wait for the weather and return by plane. She died on March 5, 1963. Dottie’s own break came afterward. Jim Reeves recorded one of her songs, RCA signed her, and “Here Comes My Baby” earned her country music’s first Grammy awarded to a female artist. The seventy-five dollars was soon spent. The month it purchased was enough to keep the West family beneath a Nashville roof while Dottie waited for the career Patsy believed was coming. More from the friendship inside that scrapbook—and the last journey the two women almost made together—is explored below.

Country Music

Hank Snow Ran Away to Sea at Twelve. Fifty Years Later, He Finally Told People Why. In 1926, twelve-year-old Hank Snow stepped aboard a fishing schooner off Nova Scotia and exchanged an abusive home for the North Atlantic. His parents had separated when he was eight. Two sisters were sent to foster homes, while Hank passed through a household where punishment could be severe and affection uncertain. After returning to live with his mother, he found himself under the authority of a violent stepfather. Snow later said the beatings left scars across his body. At twelve, with only a few years of schooling behind him, he chose the danger of the sea. He worked as a cabin boy on fishing vessels sailing from Lunenburg. The labor belonged to grown men: wet decks, heavy gear, cold wind and voyages that carried him away from land for weeks. He sang and played harmonica for the crew, partly for entertainment and partly to make the long hours bearable. With money earned around the docks, Snow eventually bought a mail-order T. Eaton guitar for $5.95. That inexpensive instrument helped open a road leading from Canadian radio to the Grand Ole Opry and “I’m Movin’ On,” the 1950 record that remained at No. 1 for twenty-one weeks. Success gave Snow a new name, rhinestone suits and an audience stretching far beyond Nova Scotia. It did not remove the boy from the schooner. For decades, he seldom spoke publicly about the abuse. Then, in 1978, at sixty-four, Snow established the Hank Snow International Foundation for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. He organized benefit performances, supported foster children and began telling audiences why the cause belonged to him. “I have never forgotten the abuse I received as a young boy,” he wrote. The future, he insisted, depended upon how adults treated the children living among them now. The work revealed a side of the Singing Ranger that the traveling songs could not. The man famous for leaving towns and broken relationships had spent much of his life carrying one house with him. In Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, a children’s playground was eventually dedicated on the land where his parents’ home had once stood. The house did not survive. Children laughing on its ground did.

Country Music

Before Nashville placed Lynn Anderson beneath television lights, her working world smelled of leather, dust and horses. She competed across California while her mother, Liz Anderson, waited in the stands. Liz sometimes became bored during the long horse shows. She brought paper and used the waiting hours to write. Several songs that later carried the Anderson family into country music took shape around those arenas. Liz wrote “The Fugitive,” recorded as a No. 1 hit by Merle Haggard. She wrote “Ride, Ride, Ride” and “If I Kiss You (Will You Go Away),” which became early hits for Lynn. The arrangement between mother and daughter was unusual. Liz’s writing career opened first, drawing the family toward Nashville and RCA. Lynn sang harmony on her mother’s sessions and was heard at an industry function, leading to her own contract with Chart Records. She was not entering the business by copying a famous mother’s finished career. Both careers were forming at almost the same time. Five of Lynn’s early hits were written by Liz. In 1968, they recorded “Mother May I” together and appeared on a Mother’s Day episode of The Lawrence Welk Show. Yet their paths did not remain professionally fused. Lynn moved to Columbia, recorded Joe South’s “Rose Garden” and became an international star. Liz continued writing and recording without becoming simply an appendage to her daughter’s success. Horses gave Lynn another territory of her own. She bred and showed them, traveled abroad seeking native breeds and supported therapeutic-riding work. One of her horses became a poster animal for the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association. That work began personally. At a birthday gathering for Lynn’s daughter, a six-year-old child with spina bifida was placed on one of Lynn’s horses. She watched the child respond to the height, balance and movement. Liz’s notebooks had once filled waiting time beside the arena. Lynn eventually used the animals inside it to give other children a different view of themselves. Mother and daughter entered music through the same gate. Neither remained waiting in the other’s shadow.