Three dollars opened a mailbox once a month and brought country music into living rooms far from Nashville.
Faron Young was already a star when Music City News appeared in July 1963. He had packed halls, climbed the charts and carried Willie Nelson’s song Hello Walls into pop radio. Yet he saw something missing. Rock fans had magazines. Country fans did not have a national fan paper devoted to their world.
Young and Grand Ole Opry promoter Preston Temple created it. The first issue promised singles charts, tour schedules, artist profiles and reports from inside Nashville. It also gave space to band members, disc jockeys, agents and other workers who rarely appeared in larger entertainment press.
The gamble cost Young heavily. Country publications had failed before, and printing and postage demanded money each month. He kept the paper alive for years. After selling his remaining interest he said the venture never earned enough to pay for a postage stamp.
He may have lost money, but he helped country music see itself.
Still the paper grew beyond its balance sheet. Beginning in 1967 readers voted in the Music City News Awards. Unlike prizes chosen by executives or committees these reflected paying country fans. The ceremony later reached national television and became part of the lineage leading to today’s CMT Music Awards.
Young’s recording career rose and receded while the publication kept arriving. By the 1980s newer names filled its pages and collected its trophies. The singer who financed the original issues no longer needed to be the largest name in each one.
That may be the clearest measure of what he built. Music City News outgrew its function as an extension of Young’s fame and became part of country music’s memory of itself.
Young died in 1996 after a self inflicted gunshot wound. His life was larger and rougher than any magazine could smooth. Colleagues remembered his humor and loyalty. They also remembered his temper and pain. The paper does not erase those contradictions. It reveals a durable part of him. He recognized a need beyond his own career and accepted real financial risk to meet it.
Music City News continued until February 2000. Print fan magazines faced competition from cable television, consolidated media and the rapidly expanding internet. The old issues remained. For historians, collectors and families they retain advertisements, photographs, columns and small notices that may provide the only surviving public trace of a career.
For thirty-six years subscribers opened their mailboxes and found the world he believed deserved its own paper. The investment never repaid him in dollars. The pages did.