Brooks & Dunn, Willie Nelson Saddle Up

Brooks & Dunn at rehearsals for the 43rd Annual ACM Awards Show in Las Vegas. Photo provided by the Academy of Country Music.

Oct. 9, 2008 — The National Finals Rodeo celebrates its 50th anniversary this year as the sport’s crowning event, and the milestone receives a country-music tribute with a 50-song box set, Boots, Buckles & Spurs, that features appropriate material from such figures as Brooks & Dunn, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Clint Black.

The NFR began in Dallas in 1958 with a total purse of $50,000. Five decades later, it’s based in Las Vegas and the prize money has ballooned to $5.6 million.

Set for release Nov. 18, Boots, Buckles & Spurs goes back even further, riding such chestnuts as Gene Autry’s 1939 classic "Back In The Saddle Again" and Patsy Montana’s 1935 release "I Wanna Be A Cowboy’s Sweetheart." Waylon & Willie’s "Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" is corraled alongside music by Moe Bandy, Lynn Anderson, Chris LeDoux, Tracy Byrd, Suzy Bogguss and Clint Black’s duet with Roy Rogers, "Hold On Partner." And the set appropriately features Brooks & Dunn’s "Cowboy Town," the theme song for this year’s finals, slated for Dec. 4-13.

Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn are slated to perform three nights in Vegas during that stretch, though Kix has another important event on his calendar prior to that. He’ll join George Jones and Barbara Mandrell, among others, during the Musicians Hall of Fame inductions in Nashville on Oct. 28. Producer Billy Sherrill — who directed hits by the likes of Tammy Wynette, Johnny Paycheck and Charlie Rich — is being added to the Hall, along with Duane Eddy, the Crickets and Booker T. & The MG’s.