The Carroll County Accident

One of Porter Wagoner's signature songs, this hit country tune unfolds around a car accident that kills Walter Browning and leaves the driver, Mary Ellen Jones, critically injured. The accident nearly exposes the affair between the two. Jones claims Browning, a respected member of the community and seemingly happily married man, was simply giving her a lift into town. The narrator, however, comes across Browning's wedding ring in the wreckage, hidden away in a matchbox. In a surprising twist, we discover the narrator is Browning's son, and he disposes of the ring to preserve his dad's reputation.

Bob Ferguson, who wrote the 1960 Ferlin Husky crossover hit "Wings Of A Dove," told author Dorothy Horstman about the inspiration behind "The Carroll County Accident," a #2 hit on the country chart: "I was driving through Tennessee on my way to Mississippi when I passed an interstate sign that said 'Carroll County,' and I said to myself, 'If I don't slow down, I'll be the Carroll County accident,' and then I thought, 'If that isn't a song title, I've never heard one.'"

This won the Country Music Association's Song of the Year in 1969.