Fans will praise you, scold you, and offer helpful advice. Fans will also defend you.

There is an intimacy about the Opry Theater that gives an entertainer a special charge.

When I came up, there was room for the new and the old. For every new artist, an old one didn't have to be pushed out.

It used to be that if you had a pretty good record, you could stop by a station in Little Rock or Atlanta and let the DJ listen to it. No way something like that can happen now.

Singing as a full-time job was not something I had given a lot of thought to and I had no clear notion of the money to be made in it.