Events
- March 4 — The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) telecasts the first complete Grand Ole Opry show from the new Grand Ole Opry House as it happened from 6-9 pm. The show featured Del Reeves, The Willis Brothers, Billy Grammer, Lonzo and Oscar, Bill Monroe, Porter Wagoner, Roy Acuff, The Crook Brothers, The Fruit Jar Drinkers, Ronnie Milsap, Grandpa Jones, George Hamilton IV and others. The show would run over about 18 minutes the first night. The telecast would repeat from 1979 to 1981.
- March 25 — "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson becomes the last song for 12 years to spend four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Country Singles chart. There wouldn't be another four-week No. 1 until "Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart" by Randy Travis in April 1990. The trend of fewer (and shorter) multi-week runs at No. 1 on Billboard, even for the year's biggest hits, is the result of changes in radio programming and the magazine's reporting methods.
- May 6 — Bob Kingsley takes over hosting duties of "American Country Countdown," a stint that will last 27 years. He had been a producer of the radio countdown show since 1974.
- May 24 — The United States Postal Service issues a 13-cent commemorative stamp honoring Jimmie Rodgers, one of the genre's pioneers. The Rodgers stamp, designed by artist Jim Sharpe, is the first in the Postal Service's long-running Performing Arts Series.
- September — The Donna Fargo Show premieres in syndication.
- October 4 — One of Nashville's most mysterious crimes involves the reported abduction and beating of Tammy Wynette. Media reports said that Wynette had been abducted by a masked man at a shopping center before the beating. No suspects were ever named or arrested. While Wynette would insist the story was true, her daughter raised doubts, claiming the incident was fabricated.
- October 21 — Fans of Mel Street are saddened when the honky tonk-styled singer, who had long battled clinical depression and alcoholism, committed suicide on his 45th birthday. He had signed a recording contract with Mercury Records earlier in the year.
Read more about this topic: 1978 In Country Music
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“All strange and terrible events are welcome,
But comforts we despise.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“A curious thing about atrocity stories is that they mirror, instead of the events they purport to describe, the extent of the hatred of the people that tell them.
Still, you can’t listen unmoved to tales of misery and murder.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)