Chris M. Junior

Music City merged with Motown on Sept. 19 when country/pop star Carrie Underwood performed alongside R&B’s Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson during the Society of Singers‘ annual Ella Award ceremony in Beverly Hills, CA.

Lyricist Jerry Leiber, who with composer and longtime collaborator Mike Stoller wrote songs recorded by Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin, Norah Jones and many others, died Monday in Los Angeles. Leiber, 78, had been battling cardiopulmonary disease.

Gregg Allman will have to lay low for a while before he can get back on the road to support his ‘Low Country Blues’ album. The upper respiratory infection that resulted in Allman canceling four June shows in Europe hasn’t cleared up. So that means he’s pulling the plug on the rest of his North American concerts that were scheduled from late August to mid-September.

Alan Jackson was on hand Thursday morning in Nashville to close out a ceremony marking the public start of a $75 million capital campaign to finance a planned 200,000-square-foot expansion of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Jackson sang ‘You’ve Been Lonesome, Too’ — a song he contributed to the multiact album ‘The Lost Notebooks of Hank Williams,’ which is due Oct. 4 — as well as his 19

Cancer survivor Merle Haggard says he’s “swinging back in full throttle right now,” and his engine is revving thanks in part to his new album, ‘Working in Tennessee,’ which is due Oct. 4 on Vanguard Records. “Music keeps me alive. It makes me breathe better,” says Haggard, who had a cancerous tumor removed from his right lung in November 2008.