Get to know the 2018 Country Music Hall of Fame inductees

From an early age, Ricky Skaggs was destined to be a country star – even if his career started in bluegrass. 

Born in Cordell, Kentucky in 1954, Skaggs' father bought him a mandolin when he was just five years old, and when the legendary Bill Monroe came through just a year later, the locals wouldn't let him leave the stage until he brought up "Little Ricky" everyone had already fallen for. By the time Skaggs was seven, Monroe had him on his TV show as a guest where he held his own picking with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. 

Skaggs continued to grow in bluegrass as a young man, playing with his friend Keith Whitley in the Clinch Mountain Boys, the Seldom Scene, J. D. Crowe & the New South before becoming the bandleader for Boone Creek, where he played alongside Vince Gill and Jerry Douglas. By the late-'70s, he joined Emmylou Harris' Hot Band and would later be a significant contributor to her "Rose in the Snow" album. 

With two decades of performing under his belt, Skaggs released his first country album in 1981, "Waitin' for the Sun to Shine," which not only propelled him up the country charts, but also garnered him crossover appeal to the pop charts and the album went gold  The Academy of Country Music Awards named him the Top New Male Vocalist of the Year in 1981, and in 1982, the Country Music Association Awards gave him the trophy for Male Vocalist of the Year.

The awards from that point did not stop for Skaggs, and he became a regular at both country music award shows, and would also earn 14 Grammys over the next 25 years. 

Skaggs stayed busy through the '80s and had three No. 1 country albums all in a row – "Highways & Heartaches", "Don't Cheat in Our Hometown" and "Country Boy." By 1985, the CMAs awarded him Entertainer of the Year. 

Ricky Skaggs never fully left his bluegrass roots behind, and in the years since his highest country hit heights, continues to be a prolific musician in both genres, but with a special interest in bluegrass, saying in a 2014 interview "my heart and soul is in rooted in this old time music" and "bluegrass music has a way of bringing all sorts of people to the party." Considering Skaggs has played with artists as wildly different as Jack White and Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, he's probably not wrong. 

Singer and songwriter Dottie West has long had fans and industry insiders rallying for her induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Born Dorothy Marsh to a poor Tennessee family with nine younger siblings and an abusive father, she was able to able to make her escape with a music scholarship to Tennessee Technological University in 1951 where she would meet her first husband, guitarist Bill West, her first week there. Soon they would have their own band and a small family with two sons. 

The Wests would settle in Cleveland where Dottie would play as half of the duo "Kay-Dots" with Kathy Dee, while also making frequent trips to Nashville with her husband for auditions, taking turns driving while the other would play guitar. All the road trips paid off and soon Dottie was signed to Starday Records. 

Once in Nashville, the Wests soon fell in with a group of other country up-and-comers, including Willie Nelson, Harlan Howard and an artist that would encourage Dottie to have her own career, Patsy Cline. In 1963 Dottie would have her first hit, "Let Me Off at the Corner," which caused the rest of Nashville to take notice and soon she was signed to RCA Victor, where she put out what would become her first top ten country hit with "Here Comes My Baby Back Again." It also earned her a Grammy – a first for any female country artist – in 1964 and a spot at the Grand Ole Opry. 

Dottie would continue to find success with hits like "Would You Hold It Against Me," "Country Girl" and "Paper Mansions" through the rest of the 1960s, but by the early 1970s, her marriage to Bill had ended and she suffered declining album sales. She already had a working relationship with Coca-Cola, and had written the jingle for "Country Sunshine" which eventually became its own single in 1973 and she was back on the charts and was nominated for another Grammy. By the end of the decade she was one of the reigning queens of country, touring with Kenny Rogers as the duo sang their own hits and duets from their "Classics" album. 

West continued to make hits, and in 1980 she had her first solo No. 1 song with "A Lesson in Leavin'." She had also developed a reputation as an artist willing to mentor younger acts, and discovered Larry Gatlin and 17-year-old Steven Wariner. 

The poverty from her youth would always haunt her. One Christmas, she gathered her extended family together and gave them all plain brown paper bags, just like the ones they received at the holidays with one orange apiece as kids – stuffing a hundred dollar bill in each bag.

Sadly, West was killed due to injuries she sustained as a passenger in an automobile accident in 1991 on the way to her favorite place where she liked to hold court both on and off the stage – the Grand Ole Opry. 

Johnny Gimble was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in the competitive Recording and/or Touring Musician Active Prior to 1980 category, a testament to a prolific fiddling career that started in the dusty rural dance halls of Texas in the 1930s all the way to his death in 2015, becoming a true pioneer of the Western swing sound along the way. 

Gimble started his career playing local gigs in Texas with his brothers as teenagers, and soon learned playing music was much more profitable than picking cotton. Before long the family moved to Louisiana, and Gimble played banjo in country singer Jimmie Davis' gubernatorial campaign band before leaving to serve in the U.S. Army for two years during World War II. When he returned to Texas, Gimble would soon join up with his next band, the legendary Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

It was Gimble's years with Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys that shot him into stardom, as both Wills and Gimble continued to redefine country music. Wills and the Texas Playboys were already a force on the country circuit with regular radio shows, tours, albums and even movie roles as Western swing became popular. Gimble would soon be known for adding a fifth string to his fiddle, giving him a lower range to play in. Later in his life, Gimble said being asked to join Wills' act "was like asking if I wanted to go to heaven." Gimble would leave the band after a couple of years to form his own band, but would later rejoin the group to tour.

It was also during this time Gimble also had his first huge success as a session musician, playing fiddle on Marty Robbins No. 1 country hit, "I'll Go On Alone" in 1952. 

Still based in Texas and hosting a local variety show in Waco and supplementing his income with odd jobs, touring musicians convinced Gimble to move to Nashville. Gimble would eventually relocate his family to Nashville in 1968 and would go on to play fiddle on albums for numerous acts from Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Connie Smith, Ray Price, Willie Nelson, George Straight, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire – even Paul McCartney. 

Johnny Gimble went back to Texas by the 1980s, but he remained active on the country circuit, touring with Willie Nelson for a a few years. He also appeared in a couple of movies during this time, appearing in Nelson's 1980 feature film "Honeysuckle Rose" and playing the role of his old friend Bob Wills in Clint Eastwood's 1982 "Honkeytonk Man."

Gimble would earn the Country Music Award for Instrumentalist of the Year five times in his career, nine Best Fiddle Player awards from the Academy of Country Music and two Grammys, but highest honor came in 1994 when he was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. A few years later, Gimble was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with Bob Wills and the rest of the Texas Playboys.