If you have to ask who any of those folks are, you don't know country music, and you don't know Hank and Johnny. This columnist is lucky enough to know Billie Jean Horton, not in her prime perhaps ...

Johnny Horton was at the top of his game in 1960 ... Horton and Williams had so many things in common that they even shared a wife. Billie Jean Jones, who married Williams and was with him ...

Johnny Horton spent some time as a rockabilly singer ... Horton eventually married Billie Jean Jones, Hank Williams’ widow. And a year after he hit #1 with “The Battle Of New Orleans ...

The version of the song that hit was from Johnny Horton, a Los Angeles native who’d been a collegiate basketball player and a gold prospector in Alaska before falling into a musical career. Horton ...