Most veteran country acts, were they forced to identify themselves by a particular recorded accomplishment, would point to a mass appeal, mainstream achievement: several years of consecutive radio hits, an identifiable country single or maybe a massive pop breakthrough.

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has all those things: a string of 15 top 10 singles that made the act a key country-radio presence from 1983 to 1988; a 1987 chart-topper, “Fishin’ in the Dark,” that still appears in some gold rotations three decades later; and the million-selling 1970 pop single “Mr. Bojangles.” But if there’s one studio achievement that most defines the band, it’s arguably the album Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

This week marks 50 years since the band recorded the 38-track set in six focused days at Nashville’s Woodland Sound Studios. Originally released on three vinyl discs in the fall of 1972, it never spawned any actual hit singles, though it did peak at No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. People heard about it through word-of-mouth, Dirt Band concerts and significant critical attention, given in great part because it was a grand experiment that managed to cross multiple gaps — generational, cultural, stylistic and geographical — in an era when America was divided by urban violence and the Vietnam War.

“I have close friends that said, ‘You kind of helped bridge that gap between my dad and me; we would put this record on, have something in common,’ ” recalls founding member Jeff Hanna. “Those are really profound things to hear about a record.”

A cover of “I Saw the Light” with Roy Acuff logged a Grammy nomination in 1971, while the entire album made the final ballot a year later. And artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Hornsby have told Hanna that Will the Circle Be Unbroken was a gateway for their understanding of American roots music.

The Dirt Band members — John McEuen, Jimmy Ibbotson, Jimmie Fadden, Les Thompson and Hanna — were all 23 to 25 years old when they arrived in Nashville from the West Coast to cut the album in an unlikely series of collaborations with numerous country and bluegrass figures who were past their commercial primes: Acuff, Earl Scruggs, Maybelle Carter, Merle Travis and Jimmy Martin.

But hits were never the point. It was about a younger generation paying homage to the music and the artists who inspired them, even if the elder artists were somewhat skeptical. Scruggs and Travis had both met the Dirt Band previously, but others needed persuasion. Acuff was resistant, and even after the sessions, he admired their musicianship while struggling with their appearance.

“They are very nice young boys,” he told The Tennessean. “But if I ever saw them again without their hair, I’d never know them. I don’t even know if I would recognize them if I saw them again just like they are.”

Bill Monroe declined entirely, dissuaded apparently by their California history, hippie fashion and recent top 40 status.

“He didn’t think his fans would understand us playing whatever that was that we played,” says Hanna. “I don’t think he realized at the time that we weren’t going to come in the studio with a full drum kit and Marshall amps and wild pedals.”

Fortunately, everyone else locked into Scruggs’ belief in the project, and the work progressed steadily beginning Aug. 6, with the Dirt Band taking one day off amid a daily schedule of nine to 13 hours of recording. The group even took a side trip on Aug. 12 to cut more material at the Columbia Recording Studios for the Earl Scruggs Revue album I Saw the Light With Some Help From My Friends.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken allowed the California kids to join their heroes on a raft of signature titles, including The Carter Family’s “You Are My Flower,” Acuff’s “The Precious Jewel,” Travis’ “Dark as a Dungeon,” Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonk Blues” and the much-covered “Orange Blossom Special” and “Soldier’s Joy,” the latter featuring McEuen playing the banjo of late Grand Ole Opry icon Uncle Dave Macon.

“That was the stuff that really got our blood going when we were kids,” says Hanna. “So for me to be able to lean over Doc Watson’s shoulder and sing harmony on ‘Tennessee Stud,’ that was priceless.”

Manager-producer William E. McEuen envisioned the Circle concept, patterned after a 1960 blues album, Down South Summit Meetin’, that featured Brownie McGhee, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Big Joe Williams and Sonny Terry playing their material with interstitial chatter from the studio floor included.

In that format, hearing Watson and Travis meeting for the first time at Woodland or having Acuff stress the importance of nailing a song on the initial take (“Let’s do it the first time, and the hell with the rest of it.”), Circle makes the legends as real and as workmanlike as the blue-collar, life-and-death songs that form the album’s backbone.

Circle had a significant long-tail effect. It went gold in 1973, platinum in 1997, and earned induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. Additionally, six of the album’s tracks were heard during episode six of the 2019 PBS documentary Country Music: A Film by Ken Burns.

Adding to the album’s place in Dirt Band lore — and in country music history overall — the band compiled two more volumes, in 1989 and 2002, snaring two Grammys and five additional nominations in the process.

The durability of that album continues, too, particularly since the Dirt Band has landed a foot in several different genres, spurring curious fans who might not have otherwise been exposed to investigate the album, and in turn learn about the icons the band was celebrating. Because of that, Circle reaches its 50th anniversary having introduced scores of fans and musicians to country music and Americana.

Says Hanna: “It casts a mighty big shadow.”

The early buzz about Jennifer Hudson’s performance as Aretha Franklin in Respect raises the distinct possibility that Hudson could become the fifth actor in four years to receive an Oscar nomination for playing a music icon in a biopic.

Rami Malek kicked off this streak by winning best actor for his performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). Renée Zellweger won best actress the following year for her performance as Judy Garland in Judy (2019). This past year, Andra Day and Viola Davis were both nominated for best actress — Day for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in The United States vs. Billie Holiday; Davis for playing blues singer Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

This streak marked the first time in Oscar history that actors were nominated three years running for performances as real-life music stars. A nod for Hudson would extend that streak to four years.

Three times before this streak, actors received lead acting nods two years in a row for playing real-life music personalities.

Jamie Foxx won best actor for playing Ray Charles in Ray (2004). The following year, Joaquin Phoenix was nominated in that category for playing Johnny Cash in Walk the Line, and his co-star, Reese Witherspoon, won best actress for playing June Carter Cash.

Twenty years earlier, Tom Hulce was nominated for best actor for playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Amadeus (1984), while his co-star, F. Murray Abraham, won in that category for playing his rival, Antonio Salieri. The following year, Jessica Lange was nominated for best actress for playing country legend Patsy Cline in Sweet Dreams.

The first time that actors received back-to-back Oscar nominations for playing real-life music figures was in the mid-1940s. Cornel Wilde was nominated for best actor for playing classical composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin in A Song to Remember (1945). The following year, Larry Parks was nominated for best actor for playing entertainer Al Jolson in The Jolson Story.

The nominations earlier this year for Day and Davis, and the anticipated nomination for Hudson, also demonstrates the increased opportunities for biopics in which Black actors portray Black music legends. The first Black actor to receive a nomination for playing a real-life music star was Diana Ross for playing Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues (1972).

Ross was the only Black actor to achieve this feat for more than two decades, until Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne were nominated for their lead performances as Tina Turner and Ike Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It? (1993). Foxx was the next Black actor to join this club — and the first Black actor to win for playing a real-life music star — for his portrayal of Charles in Ray (2004).

In addition, two Black actors have been nominated in supporting roles for playing real-life music personalities — both in the past few years. Mahershala Ali won best supporting actor for playing pianist/composer Don Shirley in Green Book (2018). Leslie Odom Jr. was nominated in that category earlier this year for playing R&B star Sam Cooke in One Night in Miami…

The uptick in nominations for biopic performances makes perfect sense. Music careers are often richly dramatic, with many ups and downs, pitfalls and comebacks. And in a biopic, there’s a song available to soundtrack every key scene.

When Chris Young returned to the road a few weeks ago after pausing 16 months for the pandemic, he experienced something he’d never witnessed before in his 15-year career: fans singing along in concert for the first time to a song that was already a hit.

During the COVID-19 shutdown, “Famous Friends,” a duet with Kane Brown and the title track to Young’s eighth RCA Nashville studio album, steadily climbed the charts, reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart this summer.

“It’s so weird because that’s not how it works in country. You don’t go from nothing to everything. It’s not like it’s a hit and then you’re touring it and you see crowds hearing it for the first time,” says Young, calling from the tour bus as he headed to a gig in Wisconsin. “So, to be able to go from zero to 100 with ‘Famous Friends’ was just wild, but I will say I don’t want that to ever happen again,” he adds with a laugh.

Though it’s been almost four years since Young’s last album release — 2017’s Losing Sleep — fans have heard a steady stream of new material from Famous Friends since its first single, party anthem “Raised on Country,” came out in 2019. That was followed by the emotional gut punch of “Drowning,” co-written by Young as his response to a friend’s sudden death, and then the title track.

The three songs highlight the musical and lyrical breadth of Famous Friends, which Young attributes to his broader experiences as he gets older and “being open and letting the music be what it needs to be without worrying about where it comes from and how it gets started.”

Time was also on his side as the pandemic gave him unlimited time to craft the album. Young never had a release date before the pandemic for the set, but adds,“I kind of look at it as the one blessing in disguise from 2020 — being able to take the time and write more songs and continue to curate the record that it came out this way. With the amount of time I had to do this album, everything has its own lane.”

True to the title, Young had some well-known pals join him. In addition to Brown, the album features collaborations with Mitchell Tenpenny and Lauren Alaina, as well as background vocals from Sarah Buxton and Hillary Lindsey.

Upon its release on Aug. 6, the album, which Young produced solo and with Corey Crowder and Chris DeStefano, hit No. 1 on the iTunes all-genre albums chart.

Young’s been a remarkably consistent performer over the last 15 years, when 16 of his last 18 singles have gone top five or higher in his slow, steady build to superstardom. All of his albums from his 2006 self-titled bow on have debuted in the top 10 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, with 2015’s I’m Comin’ Over and Losing Sleep starting at No. 1.

Like many artists during the pandemic, Young turned to Zoom writing sessions but found them lacking. “Most of the stuff that I wrote over Zoom, even the stuff that was the best of that, I do feel like there was something missing, at least for me as a songwriter,” he says. “So I don’t think there’s anything that ended up on this record that was a Zoom write, but I’ve had some stuff that was a Zoom write that was on hold for other artists.”

Young, who co-wrote 13 of the 14 songs on the album, estimates he wrote 80 to 90 songs during the shutdown. He found comfort in the process — to a point. “It’s weird because I’m one of those strange personalities where I’m an introverted extrovert and I didn’t necessarily mind being in the studio for a year, but when someone tells you you can’t leave the studio for a year, you can’t go outside, I did not take to that very well,” he says. “But I’m glad I at least had that outlet artistically.”

He and Tenpenny did manage to write his new single, the driving “At the End of the Bar,” in person — just barely. It was day three of an ice storm in Nashville and the pair decided there was just enough of a thaw to safely go write with DeStefano, in part prompted by Young’s fear of missing out if they delayed the writing session. “There’s no guarantee that what you would get one day is what you would get the next day,” he says. “I’m really, really glad we got together that day.”

The album also highlights some of Young’s most romantically vulnerable songs, including “When You’re Drinking,” “Rescue Me” and “Break Like You Do.” Unlike many of his fellow country stars who are open books about their love lives, Young shares very little of his personal life in interviews or on social media — other than adorable photos of his German shepherd Porter on Instagram — and he cautions against trying to read too much into his lyrics.

“I don’t feel like I need to necessarily go ‘This was written about this girl in particular’ when it comes to falling in love, falling out of it, breaking up, getting back together, but I’m not afraid to dig into that,” he says. “That’s a form of honesty, which is important as an artist and important as a writer.”

And many of his songs do draw upon his life, just not in a way that reveal specifics. “I had a moment before where a girl’s at the house, there’s a song on and we’re dancing while no one’s watching, and that’s kind of where the very last song on this record, ‘Tonight We’re Dancing,’ came from,” he says. “So I feel like I put that part of that out there and that’s so personal. I really hadn’t described who it was or the timing of that happening, [but] I’m sharing that part of myself in a song and other people are going to relate to it because I know they’ve done the same thing.”

But fans looking for him to spill details have long learned that’s not his style. “I have dated people and, no, I don’t feel like it’s part of my artistry for me to tell you who it was or when it was or what her name is. It’s just something that stays private with me,” he says. “That’s not for everybody, but for me, that’s what works best.”

Young, who reached arena headliner status for the first time with 2018’s Losing Sleep Tour, will kick off an arena/amphitheater headlining outing starting Oct. 21 at Little Rock, Arkansas’ First Security Amphitheater. Tenpenny and Callista Clark will provide support.

He is confident he can continue the momentum the last tour started and, as he plays festival and fair gigs this summer, Young takes to the stage with a new appreciation after the shutdown. “It’s something that no one ever took for granted — being out there playing for thousands of people very night — but if there is even a tiny part of us that didn’t understand how precious that is, how special that is, we’re making up for lost time with being back on the road,” he says.

Young — who has expanded into podcasting with his The Quad With Chris Young podcast and moved into video directing — says at some point he will likely take on producing other artists. But for right now, it’s all about moving forward, in whatever way that occurs. “If I had to put it in one word, it’s growth…just continuing to grow what I’ve built,” he says. “There’s a fantastic foundation there whether it’s the live touring part of it, having bigger hits and continuing to grow everything that I’ve already put in place. That’s the most important part for me.”