Congratulations to this year’s Country Music Hall of Fame inductees, including the late songwriting giant Hank Cochran; bluegrass titan, industry executive, and a founding member of the Country Music Association Board, Mac Wiseman; and one of country’s towering artist success stories, the great Ronnie Milsap. A member of the RCA Records family for 20 years, Ronnie earned the first of his 40 RCA number-one singles back in 1974 with “Pure Love” and went on to record such chart-topping favorites as “It Was Almost Like a Song,” “Smoky Mountain Rain,” “Any Day Now,” “Still Losing You,” and many more. Credited with album sales of more than 35 million, Ronnie’s rich and prolific career dates from the early 1960s to the present and includes an array of awards, including six GRAMMYs® and CMA Entertainer of the Year. Congratulations, Ronnie!

• In the press release announcing his induction, Ronnie was quoted as saying, “When you start listening to the radio as a kid, you want to hear your songs on there, because songs are bits of people’s lives, including your own. Then you dream that your songs and your music will mean enough to the people that, one day, they’ll put you in the Hall of Fame. Not for you, exactly, but for all the songwriters and musicians and especially the fans who tell you their life is in your songs. To me, that’s what the Hall of Fame is all about: how many people’s lives were held in your music. So many people I admire and have heard my story in their songs are already in the Hall, and I love the idea that maybe my music meant — to others — what those artists have meant to me.”