Homes of Country Music Stars

Country music makers often come off as more down to earth than other famous musicians. In the past it was almost a requirement that country musicians grew up in humblehomes, and some of them even kept their digs low key once they got famous.

Other country stars, especially nowadays, opt for housing that is not quite so basic or cozy—for example, young Carrie Underwood just purchased over 400 rural Tennessee acres to call home for about $3.4 million.

The same trials and tribulations of life that provide endless lyrical inspiration for so many country songs—love, betrayal, heartbreak, D-I-V-O-R-C-E, and death—also affect the living situations of the people who lived the lyrics—country music makers. They move in and they move on, so their homes on the market are often fodder for discussion on real estate sites like Realtor.com (who provided many of the images for this slideshow). Once in a while, as you’ll see in the following slides, country musicians even move out of Tennessee.

It’s a sure bet that many of the following structures will become immortalized in country music lyrics, or they already have. The Rosanne Cash song "House on the Lake" has this lyric inspired by the selling off of the longtime home of her famous parents: "There’s nothing left to take/ But love and years are not for sale/ In our old house on the lake."

By Colleen KanePosted on July 19, 2011

Location: Hendersonville, Tenn.
Price: $2.3 million in 2006
Beds/Baths: 7/5
Acreage: 4.6

Johnny Cash is dead and his house burned down. This sentence is a song title by Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers, and alas, it is also the truth. The Nashville-area lake house where Johnny and June Carter Cash lived together for more than three decades burned down in 2007, four years after Johnny’s death. The Bee Gee’s Barry Gibb bought it and was restoring it when it burned. Neighbors included an Oak Ridge Boy, while past neighbors included Roy Orbison and Luther Perkins, both whom tangled with fire themselves. In 2008, Johnny’s parents’ home across the street was put up for auction on eBay starting at $1.4 million.

But another home of Johnny Cash remains intact: Cinnamon Hill, the family’s winter home at Rose Hall Resort, Jamaica. Johnny purchased the circa-1747 sugar plantation great house from a friend in the 1970s. This is the site of the 1982 home invasion detailed in the autobiography "Cash." The Cinnamon Hill Golf Course surrounds the property.

Another home of Johnny Cash remains intact: Cinnamon Hill, the family’s winter home at Rose Hall Resort, Jamaica. Johnny purchased the circa-1747 sugar plantation great house from a friend in the 1970s. This is the site of the 1982 home invasion detailed in the autobiography Cash. The Cinnamon Hill Golf Course surrounds the property.

Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Price: $1,450,000
Beds / Baths: 4 / 5
Size: 4,929 square feet
Acreage: .60

Word has it that young miss Taylor Swift bought this 1925 house in historic Whitland for her family. Now, just a year after the purchase, the home is back on the market. It features vaulted ceilings and exposed beams, original hardwood floors, and so on. Perhaps more interesting to ponder is the amount of real estate girlfriend has amassed in her short period of fame: a $2 million, 4,000+ square-foot penthouse apartment in Nashville’s Adelicia luxury residence, and a $3,550,000 fairy-tale-esque 1941 Cape Cod Colonial in Beverly Hills that looks as darling as the singer herself.

Location: Beverly Hills, Calif.
Price: $3.34 million
Beds/Baths: 4/5
Size: 3,977 square feet
Acreage: 1.25

Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman purchased this updated midcentury home for $4.7 million in 2008, and the couple has since moved on to another residence. Prior to the sale, they sold their circa-2004, 10-room Nashville McMansion for $2.5 million. (LeAnn Rimes was a neighbor.) The pair also has homes in New York City and in Nicole’s homeland, Australia.

Location: Franklin, Tenn.
Price: $4.99 million
Beds/Baths: 4/6 full, 3 half
Size: 13,310 square feet
Acreage: 5.22

This 23-room mansion in a gated and medieval-themed community called Avalon originally went on the market in 2009 when it was just one year old for $7.45 million. It features four fireplaces and—hold up a minute—medieval themed? We’ll let The Real Estalker take it from here: “Visitors who pass through the main gates to Avalon are greeted by a large replication of King Arthur's sword driven into the stone, and all the streets and courts in the community have silly names like Lady of the Lake Lane and Road of the Round Table.”

Location: Studio City, Calif.
Price: $5 million
Beds/Baths: 5/7
Size: 7,953 square feet
Acreage: 3.68

This 1949 Spanish Colonial, once the home of the singing cowboy, debuted on the market last year for $6.9 million. It sold this spring to "Survivor" TV show host Jeff Probst at a discount of almost $2 million. The property features include indoor and outdoor fireplaces, a pool, pegged hardwood floors, family room with a wet bar, a breakfast room, a library/media room with walnut paneling, and a guesthouse. Surprisingly, for the singer of “Back in the Saddle Again,” there are no stables or horse trails.

Location: Franklin, Tenn.
Price: $28 million
Beds/Baths: 6/7 full, 2 half
Size: 19,000 square feet
Acreage: 135

Last year, Alan Jackson downsized from his famous mall-sized estate home on 135 acres, Sweetbriar (pictured here), selling it for $10 million less than the original asking price. Features include a wide fieldstone-floored wraparound porch, outdoor fireplace, children’s playground and playhouse, stables and fenced pasture, a pond and boathouse with roof deck, an ATV track, an airplane runway, enough garage to house a car collection numbering 20, and a rustic guest cabin for when the mansion’s occupants need to get away from it all.

It seems the Jacksons really had to tighten the belts once they downsized, because the newer house in Franklin, which they recently sold for $3.99 million, only had 14,040 square feet, eight bedrooms, eight full bathrooms, and two half bathrooms. The couple also has a house on the market in Key West and another home in the celebrity enclave Jupiter Island, Fla.

Location: Athens, Ga.
Price: $20 million
Size: 12,000 square feet
Acreage: 1,200 acres

Beaver Dam Farms, located on the former site of one of the state’s major plantations, was designed by a one Mr. Kenny Rogers. After Rogers sold his home and getaway in 2003, it became a private resort and golf club, but now it’s on the market again. The 12,000-square-foot furnished mansion still bears the stylistic stamp of Rogers, who has successfully dabbled in interior design and is a former partner in Atlanta’s Kenji Design Studios. He also designed the on-site 18-hole golf course. Included on the extensive grounds are gardens, a lake house, a 90,000 square-foot equestrian/ multipurpose facility, a conference center, two barns, trails, two pools, tennis courts, guest cottages, as well as three lakes stocked with fish.

Location: San Antonio, Texas
Price: $1.5 million
Beds/Baths: 4/3
Size: 4,788 square feet

Late last year, the Dixie Chicks’ Emily Robison sold her handsomely appointed contemporary San Antonio loft, located in the former Duerler Candy Factory, in a warehouse area close to downtown. The original structure dates to 1926 and it was converted to condos in 2005. The semi-open space still has some enclosed rooms for privacy, and features include an enormous walk-in shower, a soaking tub, and industrial touches such as polished concrete floors, exposed metal air ducts, and restored original windows.

Location: Hurricane Mills, Tenn.

Loretta Lynn’s Ranch is the site of the country legend’s plantation home since 1966 with the famous “Coal Miner’s Daughter” front gate, but the property is also a campground, a ranch, and the site of an 18,000 square foot “Coal Miner’s Daughter” Museum. Activities such as canoeing, tours, and special events—including the occasional Loretta Lynn live concert—make the ranch one of the top tourist attractions in the state.