Great Voices, Fun People ... And Legends Named Possum!

Jimmy Carter in his homebase Nashville.

Wait until you hear the new Tony Bennett Duets2 CD this week! Not sure any of this will get Country radio play, but it could: Faith, Willie and Carrie all have songs.

"On the Sunny Side of the Street" with a Willie guitar solo is real nice, big band days tune. Faith Hill's voice is not heard nearly enough these days" but she is so elegant with Mr Bennett on "The Way You Look Tonight" ... whoaaaa.

Then the Carrie Underwood choice, "It Had To Be You." We usually hear Carrie blowing out the roof with that powerful voice. In this song she has been throttled back and sounds like a classy nightclub singer in Chicago back in the Capone days.

Duets2 is going to be a big seller and will get a lot of Grammy nominations/wins!

All those voices on Duets ... and this week has been the week for Voices. At the Opry salute to George Jones, some of Country music's sometimes below-the-radar singers. Joe Diffie tore up "I Don't Need No Rockin Chair" in pure Jones voice. You will see that and Jamey Johnson, LeeAnn Womack, The Oaks and Alan Jackson October 4th on GAC.

Someone had a brilliant idea to put a Golden Ticket in ONE of the new Montgomery Gentry CDs. The winner gets a new chopper. Contests generate publicity -- as me writing this shows. Whatever it takes in this crazy. fragmented marketing world.

Taylor Swift in Music City this weekend. Two sold-out shows. The industry people will be there and let's see if this gets her another Entertainer of the Year award at the CMAs.

In the coming week, The ACM Honors Monday at the Ryman. Reba gets her lifetime achievement award then on Wednesday, The Capitol Records block party with Alan Jackson and most of the label hot shots.

And for your weekend reading ... waiting until you spend hours reading all this. Go to Indiana.gov that state website ... go to the State Fair Commission section. I guess they got tired of making copies for all the lawyers and just put all the potential paperwork on the net in PDF files. Lots of lawsuits are coming concerning that stage disaster.

You see the CAA deal memos the prices, the riders ... EVERYTHING. The emergency action plan, which was good -- just not completely followed. Very interesting reading.