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Country

Paragould, Arkansas, youngest of 14

Iris DeMent

Iris DeMent was born in Paragould, Arkansas, on January 5, 1961, the 14th and youngest child of Pat and Flora Mae DeMent. When she was three the family moved to the Los Angeles area. She wrote her first song in 1986, at 25, and her debut album came out on Rounder-Philo in 1992. The 1994 follow-up got a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Folk Album. She sang four duets on John Prine's 1999 album, put out an album of gospel songs in 2004, and in 2012 made her first album of original songs in 16 years. The Trackless Woods (2015) set the words of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. She married Greg Brown in 2002, and in 2017 she received the Americana Trailblazer Award.

Austin's Duct Tape Messiah

Blaze Foley

Blaze Foley was born Michael David Fuller in Malvern, Arkansas, in 1949. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, singing with his mother, brother and sisters as The Singing Fuller Family. In the spring of 1975 he was living in an artists' community outside Whitesburg, Georgia, when he met Sybil Rosen. The two played Atlanta, Chicago and Houston before ending up in Austin. His recordings had bad luck. The DEA confiscated the masters of his first studio album after the executive producer's drug bust, and another album's masters were stolen from the station wagon he lived in. People called him the "Duct Tape Messiah" for his taped-up clothes. He was shot dead in Austin on February 1, 1989. Ethan Hawke's film Blaze premiered at Sundance in 2018.

Lake Charles, a poet's daughter

Lucinda Williams

Lucinda Williams was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on January 26, 1953, daughter of the poet and literature professor Miller Williams. In 1978 she moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to record her first album for Folkways Records, a set of country and blues covers. An album of her own material came a year later. Her self-titled third album, released on Rough Trade in 1988, drew wide critical acclaim, and her 1998 breakthrough won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 2001 she had her first Top 40 album on the Billboard 200, and in 2002 Time named her "America's best songwriter." She has won three Grammys from 17 nominations. She had a stroke in 2020 and published a memoir in 2023.

Littlefield, Texas, outlaw country

Waylon Jennings

Waylon Jennings was born on June 15, 1937, on a farm near Littlefield, Texas. In 1958 Buddy Holly set up his first recording session and hired him to play bass, and on February 3, 1959, Jennings gave up his seat on the plane that crashed and killed Holly. Chet Atkins signed him to RCA Victor in 1965. In 1972 manager Neil Reshen won him artistic control. Wanted! The Outlaws, a 1976 compilation with Willie Nelson, Tompall Glaser and his wife Jessi Colter, was the first country album certified platinum. In the mid-1980s he formed The Highwaymen with Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson and Nelson. He went into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001 and died in Chandler, Arizona, on February 13, 2002.

The Collection