Why I'm Walkin' - Stonewall Jackson

Stonewall Jackson at the Grand Ole Opry, appropriately enough, as the singer's career has been intertwined with that hall. Jackson was the first performer ever to join the Opry without first having a recording contract, back in 19 and 56, and the first performer ever to record live from that stage.

In early 2007, the 75-year-old Jackson filed a $20 million age discrimination lawsuit against the Grand Ole Opry, claiming that the show's general manager had said, "he didn't want any gray hairs on stage" and that Jackson was "too old and too country," and had sidelined him in favor of younger acts.

Walk Away Renee - The Left Banke

The video is from October 19 and 66, less than a month after Walk Away Renee was released. I was in a boarding school in Arizona when the song hit the airwaves, and can still remember it playing incessantly on the A.M. radios that nearly every student carried.

The Left Banke was a New York-based quintet. Michael Brown, the leader of the group, was only sixteen when he wrote Walk Away Renee. The song was inspired by a Renee Fladen, a young woman who had befriended the band.

According to Brown, the song - which took about eight weeks to write and record - was rejected by ten major labels before being picked up by Smash Records. Walk Away Renee would eventually chart to #5 and would place at #82 in Rolling Stones Top 100 Singles.