Daniels spoke of waiting for new Mac Wiseman singles to come out so he could learn them as a teenager. "He has been a musical idol of mine ever since I learned my first three chords on the guitar," Daniels said before performing Wiseman's 1959 country hit Jimmy Brown the Newsboy. Gill performed Wiseman's signature hit, 'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered, and Jim Lauderdale sang Goin' Like Wildfire, which Wiseman recorded at his first solo recording session, for Nashville's Dot Records in 1951.Wiseman, 89, said becoming a member of the Hall of Fame "means more to me than anything that has ever happened in my music career." One of the founders of the Country Music Association, Wiseman played with Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs. He's one of the few living American musicians whose recording career goes back to the mid-1940s. "I could not even begin to give back what the music business has given to me in the last 70 years, professionally," he said.
According to Cochran's widow, Suzi Cochran, Krauss was the late songwriter's favorite singer, though the two never met. She performed two of Cochran's '60s classics, Make the World Go Away, a hit for both Ray Price and Eddy Arnold, and Don't Touch Me, made famous by Jeannie Seely, one of Cochran's ex-wives. Gene Watson sang Don't You Ever Get Tired (Of Hurting Me), a 1989 chart-topper for MIlsap.
Cochran, who died in 2010, "helped created the template for the professional Nashville songwriter," said Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum and director Kyle Young. Cochran had hits for decades, spanning from Patsy Cline's I Fall to Pieces and She's Got You to George Strait's Ocean Front Property and The Chair. "If you were hot or going to get hot, Hank knew it before you did," said longtime friend Bobby Bare, "and he would move in with you."
Before singing Milsap's 1985 hit Lost in the Fifties Tonight (In the Still of the Nite) with Gill, R&B singer Sam Moore recalled a 1965 show where Milsap had opened for Sam & Dave. "I had never seen the man, but I had heard the song Never Had It So Good," an early R&B hit for Milsap, Moore said. "I thought it was Ray Charles — shows you how much I knew." After spotting Milsap at rehearsal, he said, "I ran backstage and said, 'Dave, he's a white boy! He ain't gonna make it!'"
Hayes, who performed (There's) No Gettin' Over Me, called the 1981 chart-topped "one of my absolutely favorite songs ever," while Martina McBride spoke admiringly of Milsap's vocal range and sang (I'd Be) A Legend in My Time. Brenda Lee formally inducted Milsap into the hall, appearing as a last-minute substitute for Reba McEntire, who bowed out of the event after the death of her father on Thursday.
Several previous inductees attended Sunday's ceremony, including Alabama's Randy Owen, Bill Anderson, Bobby Bare, Vince Gill, Emmylou Harris, Charley Pride and Connie Smith.
