Happy 43rd birthday today to singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley! Born in Phoenix, Arizona, he was raised in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. To date, he’s released nine studio albums and has had sixteen #1 singles. In 2005, Direks won the Country Music Association (CMA) Horizon award, the same year he was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. Since then, he’s won two more CMA awards, several Academy of Country Music (ACM) awards, and has been nominated for a Grammy award every year except 2009, 2012 and 2014 for the past ten years. In the New Year, he’ll embark on his Burning Man tour, with a stop in Hamilton, Ont. on January 17 with supporting artists Jon Pardi (who toured with Dierks two years ago and Canadian sensation Tenille Townes.

 

Also Celebrating Birthdays Today: singer, songwriter and actor Josh Turner turns 41; Alberta singer/songwriter Shane Chisholm, currently residing in Nashville, turns another year older (he’s most famous for making and playing a standup bass from an automobile gas tank – and taking a grinder to it! – and a Stanley Cup replica); British steel guitarist Sarah Jory turns 49 (at the age of 13, she visited the U.S. and played at the Steel Guitar Convention in St. Louis with Buddy Emmons); pianist and songwriter Jim Brickman turns 57; Saskatchewan singer/songwriter Eli Barsi marks another year around the sun (she once named her tour bus “Screamin’ Jimmy” because it was less than cooperative); singer/guitarist Joe Walsh, of The Eagles, turns 71 (readers of Guitarist magazine once selected the guitar solos on “Hotel California” by Walsh and Don Felder as the best guitar solos of all time); songwriter Even Stevens, who wrote or co-wrote several of Eddie Rabbitt’s hits, turns 72 (he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015); and songwriter Roger Murrah, who’s had hit songs recorded by artists like Alabama, Alan Jackson and Waylon Jennings, also turns 72 (he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1995).

 

Also Born on This Date: guitar legend Duane Allman, of The Allman Brothers Band, in 1946 (he died in a motorcycle accident in 1971); songwriter Curly Putman Jr., who wrote “Green, Green Grass of Home” and co-wrote Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and George Jones’ “He Stopped Loving Her Today” with Bobby Braddock, in 1930 (he died in 2016); country comedienne Judy Canova in 1913 (she died in 1983); Sallie Martin, known as “The Mother of Gospel Music,” in 1895 (she died in 1988); and fiddle player Eck Robertson, who recorded the first commercial country songs (in 1922) with Henry Gilliland, in 1887 (he died in 1975).