March 7th in Country Music History

1944: Townes Van Zandt, singer/song-writer, is born on this day in Fort Worth, Texas.

1973: “Dueling Banjos” by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandel becomes one of the few 1970s instrumentals to be awarded a Gold record.

1980: The film Coal Miner’s Daughter, a biography of Loretta Lynn starring Sissy Spacek, opens to the public.

1983: The Nashville Network (TNN) is launched from the now-defunct Opryland USA theme park near Nashville, Tennessee.

2000: Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski, better known as Pee Wee King, dies of a heart attack in Louisville, Kentucky at the age of 86.

2013: Claude King dies of natural causes at the age of 90.