Events
- July — The Dean Martin Show becomes known as Dean Martin Presents Music Country for the longtime variety show's summer broadcasts. Country music becomes a staple of Martin's show for the 1973-1974 season — its last on the air, as it turns out.
- July 4 — Willie Nelson hosts his first Fourth of July picnic.
- July 14 — Billboard increases the number of positions for its Hot Country Singles chart to 100 (up from 75), which it would keep until January 1990. The expansion comes at a time when the number of No. 1 songs in a given year continues to increase; for the first time in history, there are at least 35 No. 1 songs in one year.
- September — Jimmy Dean's third country music TV series, The Jimmy Dean Show, premieres in syndication for what will be a two-season run.
- October 6 — Country music's most successful syndicated radio countdown program to date, "American Country Countdown," makes its debut. The three-hour program is created by Casey Kasem and Don Bustany, and is modeled after American Top 40 (which Kasem also hosted). Comedian Don Bowman is the original host, but by 1978, he would be replaced by Bob Kingsley.
- October — The new Radio & Records magazine includes a 50-position country singles chart.
- November 10 — One of Nashville's most notorious murders makes national headlines when David Akeman (aka Stringbean) and his wife, Estelle, are killed when they interrupt a burglary after returning home. Their bodies are found the next day. Their assailants—brothers John and Marvin Douglas—are later captured, convicted and sentenced to prison. Stringbean, who was 58, was best known to his audiences for his role on the syndicated series "Hee Haw."
Read more about this topic: 1973 In Country Music
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence.... I can sympathize with the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Reporters are not paid to operate in retrospect. Because when news begins to solidify into current events and finally harden into history, it is the stories we didn’t write, the questions we didn’t ask that prove far, far more damaging than the ones we did.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Just as a mirror may be used to reflect images, so ancient events may be used to understand the present.”
—Chinese proverb.