Country Music Hall of Fame Inducts Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bare + Jack Clement
The Country Music Hall of Fame inducted three new members in Nashville Sunday night (Oct. 27).
Kenny Rogers, Bobby Bare and the late "Cowboy" Jack Clement were inducted into the hallowed ranks at a ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in downtown Music City. It was the first such induction to take place in the new CMA Theater.
Friends and fellow stars were on hand to honor the new inductees. John Prine, Kris Kristofferson, Marty Stuart and Emmylou Harris paid tribute to Clement, while Harris, Rodney Crowell, Kristofferson, Buddy Miller and John Anderson paid tribute to Bare.
Darius Rucker, Barry Gibb, Kelly Lang, Alison Krauss and 'The Gambler' songwriter Don Schlitz paid tribute to Rogers.
According to Nashville's Tennessean newspaper, Clement's daughter, Alison Clement-Bolton, teared up as she said, “He’s just my cowdaddy. [The induction] just means he’s extraordinary, like I always knew he was. … He didn’t want to be famous. He just wanted to have fun, and he did that.”
Clement passed away in August at the age of 82, but lived long enough to learn he was being inducted.
Fellow country legend Tom T. Hall inducted Bare. Hall was once Bare's bass player.
“This is not entirely about me; it’s about all the people who have helped me along the way," Bare stated. "I’ve been blessed. I’m just a singer; it’s all I am. But ain’t I something?”
Garth Brooks inducted Rogers, saying, “In this business anyone that comes before you is a god, any one that comes after you is a punk. This is so backward right now.”
Rogers said the hardest part about the evening was trying to keep his nine-year-old twin boys, Justin and Jordan, from goofing around in front of the cameras.
“They say kids at my age will either make you or break you, and right now I’m leaning heavily toward break,”the 75-year-old entertainer joked.
"Success is not a happening, it’s a journey,” he said on a more serious note. "This is the culmination of the whole career. I’ve done pretty much everything else, and without this it would have been incomplete.”