1933
Born on this day was Fred Carter Jr. an American guitarist, singer, producer and composer. He was part of Nashville's 'A Team' and played with Kenny Rogers, Joan Baez, Simon & Garfunkel, Slim Whitman, Floyd Cramer, Sonny James, Hank Snow, Faron Young, Johnny Horton and Jim Reeves. He died on July 17, 2010 age 76.

1938
Born on this day was American country music and gospel singer Marilyn Sellars who had several hits during the mid-1970s most notably the original version of "One Day at a Time" in 1974.

1943
Born on this day in Roswell, New Mexico, was John Denver (Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr.), singer, songwriter, activist, and humanitarian. Denver recorded and released over 300 songs, earning him 12 gold and 4 platinum albums with his signature songs "Sunshine on My Shoulders", "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "Leaving on a Jet Plane", "Rocky Mountain High", "Annie's Song" and "Calypso". Denver was killed on October 12, 1997 at the age of 53 when his experimental Rutan Long-EZ plane, crashed into the Pacific Ocean near Pacific Grove, California.

1952
Hank Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia but due to an ice storm in the Nashville area, Williams could not fly, so he hired Charles Carr, to drive him to the concert. When they arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee, Williams complained of feeling unwell and saw a doctor. Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel, and at around midnight in Bristol, Virginia, Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and asked Williams if he wanted to eat. Williams said he did not, and those are believed to be his last words. Carr later stopped for fuel at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where he realized that Williams was dead.

1954
Born on this day in Aylmer, Quebec, was Charlie Major Canadian country music artist. He was blinded in one eye as a result of a pellet gun accident when he was 12. Through the 1990s, he won the Juno Award as Country Male Vocalist of the Year for two years in a row.

1968
Billboard magazine reports that this year, for the first time, US total music sales have topped one billion dollars. Glenn Campbell scored six #1 albums in 1968. His total of 19 weeks at #1 was the most by any artist, more than twice that achieved by any other act.

1977
Dolly Parton's "Here You Come Again" spent its fifth week at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It would be the last song to spend that long atop the chart until 1990's "Love Without End, Amen" by George Strait.

1995
The Great American Country TV channel was launched with Garth Brooks' video "The Thunder Rolls" as the first video.

1997
American pianist Floyd Cramer died age 64. He became famous for his use of melodic "whole-step" attacks. He was one of the busiest studio musicians in the industry, playing piano for stars such as Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, Patsy Cline, the Browns, Jim Reeves, Eddy Arnold, Roy Orbison, Don Gibson, and the Everly Brothers, among others. It was Cramer's piano playing, for instance, on Presley's first RCA Victor single, "Heartbreak Hotel". In 1961, Cramer had a hit with "On the Rebound", which went to #4 on the Billboard chart.

2002
Shania Twain was at #1 on the US Country chart with her fourth studio album Up! The album debuted at #1 on both the Top Country Albums chart and the Billboard 200, after selling 874,000 copies in its first full week of release, it then stayed in the Top 100 of the Billboard chart for more than 60 weeks.

2017
Luke Bryan was at #1 on the Country Charts with What Makes You Country his sixth studio album. The album includes the singles "Light It Up", "Most People Are Good", "Sunrise, Sunburn, Sunset". and the title track.