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Jelly Roll Makes a Nashville-Area Grandma’s Dying Wish Come True

JELLY ROLL MAKES A NASHVILLE-AREA GRANDMA’S DYING WISH COME TRUE

Carena Liptak
Carena LiptakPublished: January 4, 2024
News Channel 5 Nashville
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Columbia, Tenn., native Sharon Brown — a mild-mannered, white-haired grandmother
— may not look like the typical Jelly Roll fan.

See Jelly Roll Live-Get tickets as low as $25.44

But Jelly's music is all about facing struggle and adversity, and those topics
have resonated deeply with Brown's story over the past few years.

According to a report from local Nashville station News Channel 5 WTVF, Brown is
terminally ill, and she has taken comfort from the singer's music during a
period of mounting health setbacks and challenges.

"She had an aneurysm which caused early onset dementia. She also has renal
failure, and she has chosen not to do dialysis. It's a lot. It's a lot for her,"
Brown's daughter Melissa explains.

Brown's Jelly Roll fandom has also been a connection point across three
generations: She convinced Melissa as well as her granddaughter, Navaeh, to get
matching "Bad Apple" tattoos, an homage to Jelly's long-running fan club.

The singer is a native of Antioch, Tenn. — not far from Brown's hometown — so
Melissa even drove her mom out to see the real-life Whitsitt Chapel, which Jelly
attended as a child and is featured on the cover of his debut country album of
the same title.

In late 2023, Melissa and Brown were at one of Jelly's local toy drive concerts,
and Melissa decided to try to make her mom's ultimate wish come true: To meet
the man himself.

"I explained her situation and said her dying wish, her No. 1 on her bucket
list, was to meet Jelly Roll," she recounts in the news segment, explaining that
she approached a crew member who was receptive to hearing Brown's story — and
helped them facilitate a meeting backstage.

"He gave me so many hugs," Brown remembers. "He made me feel like I was so
special. He told me I only looked 50!"

Jelly is known for going above and beyond to forge connections with his fans.
From meeting people facing terminal illnesses to performing special shows in
prisons and rehab centers, he always makes sure that stardom goes hand in hand
with giving back.

Speaking of giving back, the toy drive that Jelly was promoting when he met
Brown was an initiative first inspired by his teen daughter, Bailee Ann, who
keeps an annual tradition of collecting toys for local children at the holidays.
Not only did Jelly set out to turn that dream into the biggest toy drive in
Nashville history, but he also personally donated a semi-truck full of toys to
the Last Minute Toy Store, an organization that distributes donated toys to
children across middle Tennessee during the holidays.

THE 10 BEST COUNTRY ALBUMS OF 2023 - CRITIC'S PICKS

In 2023, the album format was much more than just a way for artists to collect
and organize their songs. In fact, the best albums of the year often doubled as
diaries for the artist's journey through a new life stage or personal evolution.

So many artists upped their game that it was impossible to include them all in
this list. Luke Combs' Gettin' Old and Hardy's The Mockingbird & the Crow only
made it to honorable mention status, which says a lot about just how high the
bar was for great, transformative albums in 2023. Special shout-outs are also
due to self-titled records from Zach Bryan and Brandy Clark, who released
excellent personal statement projects this year, and Dustin Lynch, who delivered
unflinching honesty in his album, Killed the Cowboy.

But ultimately, the Top 10 albums of 2023 were master classes in self-reflection
and growth; the artists who made them have hit their stride or are still on
endless quests towards personal and artistic fulfillment.

Read on for Taste of Country's best albums of 2023, which were picked by a team
of staff writers.

Gallery Credit: Carena Liptak

No. 10: Dierks Bentley, 'Gravel & Gold'

Capitol Records Nashville

NO. 10: DIERKS BENTLEY, 'GRAVEL & GOLD'

Gravel & Gold may not have had a splashy release or a big outing at country
awards shows, but in 2023, few albums did a better job of bookmarking a life
stage. For Bentley, that meant balancing middle age against wanderlust,
parenthood against recklessness and mainstream country music against the rootsy
bluegrass that’s always been a touch point for Bentley, no matter how much
success he achieves in the world of commercial country.

Nearly five years elapsed between Bentley’s last full-length album, The
Mountain, and the release of Gravel & Gold (unless you’re counting his Hot
Country Knights project) and he’s said that he scrapped two albums worth of
material and started again in the meantime.

The finished product was worth the work. All of Bentley’s albums strive to dig
under the surface, and get at some essential truth about the human experience.
With songs like “Beer at My Funeral,” “Something Real” and “Walking Each Other
Home,” Gravel & Gold accomplishes that goal as articulately as any of his
records to date.

No. 9: Brent Cobb, 'Southern Star'

Thirty Tigers

NO. 9: BRENT COBB, 'SOUTHERN STAR'

Brent Cobb is country’s king of finding the divine in the ordinary. Not for the
first time, his 2023 album Southern Star proved that superpower. Tender and
quietly rebellious, Cobb’s record is an ode to the small-town South, from the
vantage point of someone who’s lived it, left it and followed its beacon back
home again.

Love is the central tenet of Southern Star, and during a year when political
tensions and divides in belief systems felt as caustic as ever, Cobb’s songs
offered a soothing alternative take. Without putting on blinders to the harsher
realities at large, he focused on small delights in songs like “It’s a Start,”
“Livin’ the Dream” and “Shade Tree.” Though Cobb’s verses are full of cicadas,
kudzu vines and other images specific to the South, you don’t need to be from
the singer’s hometown to be comforted by his message, as long as you’ve ever
felt the comforting pull of home.

No. 8: Ashley McBryde, 'The Devil I Know'

Warner Music Nashville

NO. 8: ASHLEY MCBRYDE, 'THE DEVIL I KNOW'

Honesty has always been a hallmark of Ashley McBryde’s songwriting, but she took
things to an unflinching new level in her 2023 solo project, The Devil I Know.

She’s not afraid to paint herself or her family in an unflattering light with
“Learned to Lie,” a song that traces her own dishonesty in relationships back to
an unhappy childhood. But she also documents the love and lessons her mother
gave her in “Light on in the Kitchen.” Honesty is sometimes self-contradictory,
and McBryde is comfortable with that on this album.

Being honest with herself also means that, more than ever, she knows who she is.
True-blue country traditionalism comes in lock-step with rock ‘n’ roll. McBryde
romanticizes the road in one verse, then waxes homesick in the next. She seeks
to change her wild ways in “Blackout Betty,” but in “Whiskey and Country Music,”
she knows that she can only change so much. The self-awareness she gained while
making The Devil I Know only elevates the kind of performer -- and the kind of
human -- she’s always been.

No. 7: Chris Stapleton, 'Higher'

UMG Nashville

NO. 7: CHRIS STAPLETON, 'HIGHER'

Stapleton’s not reinventing the wheel here, but can you blame him? Over his past
few album cycles, he’s found a groove that’s tough to argue with: Equal parts
soul, country, rock and blues, his albums consistently deliver a high quality
mix of bangers, ballads and nomad’s songs.

That’s as true as ever on Higher, but the track list stretches Stapleton just a
little bit in every direction. Literally, the title track pushes Stapleton’s
world-famous voice to dizzy new heights that are a stretch -- even for him.

Much like some of the other albums on this list, like Bentley’s Gravel & Gold
and McBryde’s The Devil I Know, Higher paints a picture of a man who’s a work in
progress. It’s no accident that Stapleton ends this album with “Mountains of My
Mind,” a solo write that gets honest about the mental hurdles he hasn’t cleared
just yet. He’s on an eternal journey -- musically, and probably personally, too
-- and his listeners are riding shotgun with him along the way.

No. 6: Morgan Wallen, 'One Thing at a Time'

Big Loud Records

NO. 6: MORGAN WALLEN, 'ONE THING AT A TIME'

The stats don’t lie: Wallen’s One Thing at a Time album performed incredibly in
2023.

When it first came out back in the spring, it was the No. 1 album in the country
-- of any genre -- and it out-sold all the other albums in the Billboard 200 Top
10, combined. There’s simply no one else in the country format bringing in those
kinds of numbers.

But charts aren’t everything, and One Thing at a Time also demonstrated staying
power for its heart, fan connection and sheer heft. With a whopping 36 tracks to
its name, including duets with Eric Church, Hardy and Ernest, the track list had
a little bit of something for everyone -- traditional country fans and listeners
who like Wallen’s pop and hip hop sides could all say they got their money’s
worth from this album. When it comes to radio hits, One Thing at a Time boasts
multiple once-in-a-career goldmines -- I mean, “Thought You Should Know,” “You
Proof” and “Last Night” all on the same album?! C’mon!

No. 5: Jelly Roll, 'Whitsitt Chapel'

Bailee & Buddy/BBR Music Group

NO. 5: JELLY ROLL, 'WHITSITT CHAPEL'

It’s a little unfair to call this album a debut -- it’s the seventh full-length
release of Jelly Roll’s career, after all -- but it’s his first mainstream
country release, and his first release since signing to a major label and
becoming a bona fide star. It’s not your typical debut album, and it’s not your
typical country album, either, featuring input from fringe artists like Struggle
Jennings and rapper Yelawolf as well as plenty of material informed by Jelly’s
hip hop background.

But Whitsitt Chapel will be remembered as an album that made a major impression
on country’s mainstream. Here, you’re listening to a singer blossom into
superstardom without caving to it; Jelly remains himself throughout the track
list, and in the process, he redefines what it might mean to be a poster child
of country music.

Some of the genre’s biggest stars stand behind him: Miranda Lambert, Hardy and
Ashley McBryde lent their pens to the track list of Whitsitt Chapel, plus
Brantley Gilbert and Lainey Wilson make vocal cameos. But even bigger evidence
of Whitsitt Chapel’s bona fides is its central message itself: Named after the
church Jelly attended as a young person, it grapples with the singer’s faith and
his relationship with God.

No. 4: Megan Moroney, 'Lucky'

Sony Music

NO. 4: MEGAN MORONEY, 'LUCKY'

We’ll stop just short of calling Megan Moroney’s debut album a concept record,
but Lucky undoubtedly creates a world all unto itself. Quippy, hilarious and
country as heck, that world introduces Moroney as a sharp-edged songwriter who’s
not afraid of a snappy comeback or a soul-baring country song -- and both appear
on this track list, in just about equal measure.

Moroney has her fair share of nay-sayers, especially those who attribute the
success of her breakout hit, “Tennessee Orange,” to the fact that she may or may
not have written it about Morgan Wallen, or may or may not have been dating
Wallen around the time of writing it.

Sure, Moroney winked at those rumors, but if you listen to the rest of the songs
on Lucky, you’ll hear first-hand how fully realized of an artist she is in her
own right. Steel guitar and deadpan delivery are her two best friends on this
album, which confronts a series of heartbreaks and breakups and ultimately leads
her to her most important relationship: The one with the “Girl in the Mirror.”

No. 3: Kelsea Ballerini, 'Rolling Up the Welcome Mat'

Black River Entertainment

NO. 3: KELSEA BALLERINI, 'ROLLING UP THE WELCOME MAT'

No one -- Ballerini included -- expected this EP to become the force that it
did. She surprised-dropped the six-song project in February, along with a short
film, as a way of chronicling her then-recent divorce from fellow country artist
Morgan Evans. From the stark heartache of “Just Married” and “Penthouse” to the
rage of “Blindsided” to the tender, early healing stages of “Leave Me Again,”
this album opened up Ballerini’s divorce diary -- and the response from fans was
powerful and immediate.

Ballerini had actually just released another, more traditional album called
Subject to Change a few months before this EP came out, and she was on tour to
promote that project when she started performing Rolling Up the Welcome Mat
songs live at her shows.

The live versions proved even more compelling to Ballerini’s fan base, and as
Ballerini worked through her post-divorce emotions in real time, the songs
evolved with lyric changes and additions, ultimately resulting in a deluxe
edition. It’s hard to think of another country album where an artist has let
fans in so completely -- and taken them step by step through such a painful
personal journey.

No. 2: Jordan Davis, 'Bluebird Days'

MCA Nashville

NO. 2: JORDAN DAVIS, 'BLUEBIRD DAYS'

Davis started his country career with some effective pop-country hits, like
“Singles You Up,” but he has leaned into grounded, message-heavy traditional
country over the past couple years, with even more impressive results. Bluebird
Days, his second record, is Davis' most self-realized effort to date.

The track list contains both “Buy Dirt” and “Next Thing You Know,” two monster,
mid-tempo hits about putting down roots, finding gratitude in small moments and
growing a young family.

The album tracks, while not as well-known, are just as powerful. For example, on
the title track, Davis remembers the “bluebird days” of a happy childhood before
it was clouded by divorce. Another song, “Fishing Spot,” is about remembering a
lost loved one -- not by going to their grave, but instead going to their
favorite muddy riverbank. Davis still includes a party song or two on this
record for color, but the bulk of the songs show him doing what he does best:
Singing about real life.

No. 1: Cody Johnson, 'Leather'

Warner Music Nashville

NO. 1: CODY JOHNSON, 'LEATHER'

Consistency is the name of Cody Johnson’s game, so the biggest surprises of
Leather are the spots where he pushes himself. Those moments happen frequently,
though one of the album’s most hotly-anticipated surprises -- Johnson’s Carrie
Underwood duet -- wound up getting pushed for another, future project.

Still, the Leather track list is rangy enough as it is, including one
twist-filled, surly song called “Jesus Loves You” that breaches unusual ground
for a country track. Two big-name, and very different, collaborations -- one
with Brooks & Dunn and one with Jelly Roll -- also broaden Johnson’s
versatility.

It also may come as a surprise to fans that the singer -- whose last record,
Human, was a double album -- leaned Leather down to a tight 12 songs. He’s
hinted at future projects or volumes to come, but for now, the brevity of
Leather is worth it: The result is a focused, self-contained project that
showcases both Johnson’s growth and his vision. After all, when you’ve honed in
fully on who you are as an artist, you don’t always need tons of different songs
and perspectives to tell your story.
Filed Under: Jelly Roll
Categories: Country Music News, Heartwarming Stories
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