Country royalty Milsap to perform at Tifton venue

TIFTON — With the late Merle Haggard having played a sold-out show at the end of 2015, joining the likes of Deana Carter, Willie Nelson, Sammy Kershaw, John Berry and the re-formed Shenandoah among country greats who’ve played local venues here, this community just off Interstate 75 is establishing itself as “little Nashville” among music fans.

Much of that has to do with the fact that promoter Austin McAlpin, eschewing the lure of Music City to work out of his family home in tiny TyTy, has teamed with north Georgia’s Six String Southern Productions to create a comfortable niche for practitioners of the genre.

McAlpin and Six String Promotions owner Adam Potts will add another impressive notch to their belts this summer when country music royalty Ronnie Milsap performs at the University of Georgia Tifton Campus Conference Center.

Sponsored by Budweiser, tickets for the July 15 show are on sale at www.TicketAlternative.com. Ticket prices start at $28.

Milsap, a crossover superstar of the ’70s and ’80s whose 40 country music No. 1s is third only to George Strait and Conway Twitty, is best known for smash hits like “It Was Almost Like a Song,” “Smoky Mountain Rain,” “Any Day Now,” “Daydreams About Night Things,” “(There Ain’t) No Gettin’ Over Me” and “Lost in the ’50s Tonight,” songs that were as popular on pop and adult contemporary stations as they were country radio.

A member of the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame, Milsap’s career highlights include four Academy of Country Music awards, two Billboard Country Music Song of the Year awards, eight Country Music Association awards — including Entertainer of the Year in 1977 — and six Grammys.

The singer, who was the first blind country star to top the charts, scored Best Male Country Performance Grammys in 1975 (“Please Don’t Tell Me How the Story Ends”), 1977 (“I’m a Stand By My Woman Man”), 1982 (“There Ain’t No Gettin’ Over Me”), and the oddity of having the same song (“Lost in the ’50s Tonight”) win the award in 1986 and 1987.

Milsap’s final Grammy was for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, the 1988 hit “Make No Mistake, She’s Mine” he recorded with Kenny Rogers.

Inspired by the likes of Southern rock and roll pioneers Ray Charles, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis Presley — each of whom he typically pays tribute to in concert — Milsap scored the first of his 40 No. 1s, “Pure Love,” in 1974, and recorded the last of his chart-topping hits, “A Woman in Love,” in 1989. In between, he had runs of seven consecutive No. 1s, and an incredible string of seven No. 1s from 1976 to 1978 and 11 chart-toppers from 1980 to 1983.

Starting with “(I’m Having) Daydreams About Night Things” in 1975, Milsap’s songs started showing up regularly on pop and adult contemporary charts. “It Was Almost Like a Song” in 1978 reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 7 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and his “Any Day Now” spent five weeks at No. 1 on the AC chart.

Born in North Carolina and blind since an early age, Milsap earned a scholarship to Georgia’s Young Harris College, but he didn’t stay long. He left in 1963 to join J.J. Cale’s band, and music has been his calling since.

Information about the July 15 show and McAlpin Entertainment is available at www.mcalpinentertainment.com.