Darius Rucker was surprised with a plaque celebrating the RIAA’s recent 8x-Platinum certification of his hit song “Wagon Wheel” during a visit to the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum on Wednesday (February 12th) in Nashville. Since topping the charts for back-to-back weeks in 2013, “Wagon Wheel” has now become one of the top five best-selling Country songs of all time and Darius is now the only solo male country act to achieve the honor of an 8x-plus multi-Platinum song in RIAA’s history.
“Wagon Wheel” was originally released by Old Crow Medicine Show in 2004. It was written by the band’s lead singer, Ketch Secor, and was based on a sketch by Bob Dylan, who is credited as a co-writer. The single was featured on Darius' 2013 True Believers album.
Darius told us at the time that "Wagon Wheel" is the perfect bluegrass and country song. ["The way they do the song is the way it should be done. It's just a perfect bluegrass song. I didn't think that I could make it a country song, then I heard a band playing it in a country way, and I thought, 'Wow! I wanna cut that.' I talked Frank Rogers, my producer, into cutting it, and it's the perfect country song. I don't know if I could be any countrier than that. For me, it was a no-brainer. Once we started cutting it, I couldn't believe I didn't cut it for my first record. It's just one of those songs that I just thought was perfect."] SOUNDCUE (:25 OC: . . . thought was perfect.)
“Wagon Wheel” earned Darius a Grammy for Best Country Solo Performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards, the third of his career.