Ricky Skaggs, Dottie West enter Country Music Hall of Fame
NASHVILLE, Tenn.— Bluegrass and country star Ricky Skaggs, singer Dottie West and fiddler Johnny Gimble are the newest members of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
The three artists were inducted Sunday at the Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn., in a ceremony featuring performances from Garth Brooks, Chris Stapleton, Connie Smith and Dierks Bentley.
It was a night devoted mostly to musicianship in the form of Skaggs, who started his career as a child prodigy on mandolin, and Gimble, who played Western swing fiddle on numerous iconic country records. West was recognized as a trailblazing female singer who helped many others succeed in Nashville.
Fellow Hall of Famer Brenda Lee invited several women on stage to help induct West, including Trisha Yearwood and Emmylou Harris.
“We’ve waited a long time for this to happen,” Lee said.
The Kentucky-born Skaggs first played Bill Monroe’s famed and priceless Gibson F-5 mandolin when Skaggs was just 6 years old. He wowed audiences as a child on a syndicated television show hosted by bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.
Along with Keith Whitley, he learned under the tutelage of bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley. He became a country music star in the 1980s, with several No. 1 hits that mixed his bluegrass influences with Telecasters and steel guitars, including “Heartbroke” ”Highway 40 Blues” and “Country Boy.”
He was named entertainer of the year at the CMA Awards in 1985. By the ’90s he rededicated himself to bluegrass through his band, Kentucky Thunder, and has earned more than a dozen Grammy Awards.
Skaggs said that he learned about bluegrass from the originators of the genre, artists like Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs and Stanley.
“I am thankful to be a carrier of that original seed,” Skaggs said.
Gimble, of Tyler, Texas, was a celebrated sideman who played with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys in the 1950s before coming to Nashville to become an in-demand studio musician. He was considered a superpicker by Chet Akins, played in Willie Nelson’s touring band and played on records for George Strait, Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty and many more.