21. Wynn Stewart

Born during the depression, Wynn grew up in a sharecropping family. While he was a teenager, Wynn and his family moved to California. Although he wanted to grow up to become a baseball player, he had an issue with his hand that prevented it so instead, he formed a band that played in local clubs. Soon he was meeting up with various players and making connections throughout the circuit. From the point where he signed his first label contract in 1954 until the end of his career, he struggled with radio success. He never achieved a huge number of hits or a large level of fame. But even without chart triumphs, Wynn still became an important piece in the country music tapestry. First, he hired a young Merle Haggard as his bass player, and ended up writing Merle’s first hit song (Merle would wind up becoming one of the biggest legends country music ever knew). Second, Wynn was one of the originators of the Bakersfield sound. Bakersfield was a subgenre of country that was born out of Bakersfield, California, and used a backbeat and more electric instruments. Wynn’s music would go on to influence Merle (inducted 1994) and Buck Owens (inducted 1996), then later artists like Marty Stuart (inducted 2020) and Dwight Yoakam. Currently, the chances of Wynn getting into the Hall Of Fame are limited with the list of artists in front of him. But if he were to get in, it would be very deserving.