Texas Music News — September 9, 2026
The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame will honor George Strait with its Career Maker Award on October 26. He’s only the second artist to receive it. Reba McEntire got there first, back in 2018. Now the King of Country joins her — honored for the songs he chose to sing, not the ones he wrote.
Strait grew up in Poteet, Texas, and worked cattle outside nearby Pearsall before joining the Army. He nearly quit music until a stint at San Marcos’s Cheatham Street Warehouse led to his 1981 MCA deal. Since then, he has recorded 264 songs. Of those, 72 came from writers now enshrined in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Forty-four of those writers hadn’t made the Hall yet when Strait first cut their work.
Every Song He Touches Becomes His Own
That’s the phrase Hall of Fame songwriter Gretchen Peters used to describe a Strait cut. “Having George Strait record a song of mine, especially so early in my career, felt like nothing less than a stamp of approval from country music itself,” said Peters, the Hall’s Board Vice Chair and co-writer of Strait’s “The Chill of an Early Fall.” “George is so deeply rooted in the traditions of country music, so beloved and respected and unassailable in his song choices. Every song he touches becomes, de facto, a George Strait song.”
Strait will accept the award on October 26 at Nashville’s Music City Center. The gala will feature tributes and acoustic performances from other artists. “I’m so honored to be receiving the Career Maker Award from the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame,” Strait said. “I look forward to being there with some of the most talented Hall of Fame songwriters I’ve been so lucky to be associated with throughout my career.” For a singer who rarely wrote his own hits, that’s about as close to a signature as country music gets.
Details at MusicRow.
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