This episode of Cocaine and Rhyne Stones will be particularly upsetting for many of you to hear.

The details will not be as graphic as they have been in the past, such as in the spade-coolie episode.

But there are multiple instances of child abuse, child molestation, and sexual assault in this episode.

This was not what I expected to find when I chose today's subject, but now that I've learned about it, I won't pretend that it's not there.

As always, there is a full transcript of this episode at Cocaine and RhyneStones.com if you'd like to preview it before listening.

You do not have to be born in a certain state to become a country music star.

Hank Snow and Murray and Shania Twain are all Canadian.

If you're not aware, Shania Twain is the single best-selling female artist in country music history.

Being poor isn't required to have artistic integrity in country music.

If it was, then you'd never have heard the name Grand Parsons in relation to the genre.

And if you have no love for what Grand Parsons did with country music, then how do you feel about the songwriting of Towns Van Zand?

His family was so rich they have a county in Texas named after them.

Affluence is not a deal breaker.

You do not have to be white.

Ask Freddie Fender, Neil McCoy, Charlie Pride, Johnny Rodriguez, or any other non-anglo-saxon country superstar.

I would go so far as to say there are no special circumstances of birth required to understand or create country music.

Oh, you have to do is mean it.

Read Charlie Pride's autobiography.

The racism you expect is there, but according to Charlie, nearly none of it was the knee-jerk racism of white people not wanting a black person to make country music.

It was almost entirely a secondary form of prejudice and it came from black people as well as white people.

Everyone saw Charlie Pride and made a snap judgment that he must be a failed R&B or soul singer,

hooding on an act to try and make it in country music.

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