Former country columnist and TV host Hazel Smith died Sunday night (March 18) at her home in Madison, Tenn. She was 83. Smith was a mainstay on Music Row from the late 1960s onward. By her own account, she named the “Outlaw” movement that skyrocketed Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Tompall Glaser to fame in 1976 via the album Wanted: The Outlaws. In recognition of her service to CMT and the music industry, the channel launched the Music Row Storytellers event in her name in 2016 with the Music Health Alliance as its beneficiary. Smith had been in declining health following a cancer operation in 2007. In recent years, she often covered musical events while seated in a wheelchair pushed by her grandson.
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