Larry Cordle, one of the July 4 entertainers, may be one of the most accomplished Ky. musicians you never heard of

Sign at one entrance to Lawrence County, Kentucky

When the Kentucky legislature created the Country Music Highway in Eastern Kentucky in 1994, and folks in Lawrence County erected their signs for it, the first entry wasn't Ricky Skaggs or the late Keith Whitley. It was Larry Cordle, who will perform before headliner Chris Knight at the free concert at the 76 Falls Country Club on Saturday, July 4.

Skaggs, Cordle's neighbor and childhood friend, played a key role in boosting Cordle's career as a songwriter. When he heard Cordle’s “Highway 40 Blues,” he promised to record it, and in 1983 it was the nation's No. 1 country song. \“A lot of people who hear it think it's about Interstate 40, which runs through Nashville, but I actually wrote it about that little state highway in Kentucky,” which runs from Salyersville through Paintsville and Inez to the West Virginia border, almost touching Lawrence County.

Cordle's best known song is “Murder On Music Row,” co-written with Larry Shell in 1999 as a complaint against the rise of “country pop” music. It was first recorded by his bluegrass group, Lonesome Standard Time, as the title track of an album, and gained its greatest fame when it was recorded as a duet by George Strait and Alan Jackson, reaching No. 38 on the country singles chart even though it was never officially released as a single.

Larry Cordle

The July 4 concert will be a reunion for Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time, which he founded with his friend Glen Duncan in 1990. The band's self-titled debut album was nominated for a Grammy award in 1992.

Cordle may have a low profile in then musin business these days, but he has a group of loyal fans, according to the reaction to the first post about him on the Spirit of 76 Facebook page. It has received almost 1,500 likes, and there have been many favorable comments, such as, "One of our very best favorite artists!!! Been listening to him for years. I'm disappointed that it'll be in Kentucky and not Albany, Oregon. Sigh." (Ironically, Albany, Oregon, is the center of bluegrass-seed production in the United States.)

Cordle is set to perform at 7 p.m. CT Saturday, July 4, after EmiSunshne and before Chris Knight.