Paramount Presents: An Evening with Ronnie Milsap

Forty #1s. Five decades of charted singles. Creating a new way of recording (being blind, his hyper-attuned hearing led him to create and build what is now known as Ronnie’s Place, where the new album, the Duets, was captured), he broke genre rules and became one of the biggest pop/AC and even R&B artists of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Six Grammys. CMA Entertainer of the Year and four Album of the Year Awards. The first country video played on MTV (the ironic “She Loves My Car”). An early champion of NFL star Mike Reid, who wrote many of Ronnie’s #1 hits and who would go on to write Bonnie Raitt’s second most enduring classic “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

Always chasing the music, always hungry for the songs, Milsap is now an inspiration for a new generation of country stars from critical standard setters Kacey Musgraves and Little Big Town to CMA/ACM Entertainers of the Year Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean, as well as a standard-setter for friends like Dolly Parton, George Strait, Willie Nelson, and even groundbreakers Leon Russell and Billy Gibbons.

The evening will include a short preview of the 8-part Ken Burns documentary series Country Music which premieres on WVPT WHTJ WCVE PBS on September 15. The film tells the compelling history of a truly American art form, focusing on the biographies of the fascinating trailblazers who created and shaped it including the Carter Family, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Ronnie Milsap, and more!