Darius Rucker's 'Darius and Friends' benefits St. Jude, celebrates female stars at Ryman

Darius Rucker's 13th annual live auction and benefit showcase for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital allowed the music superstar to share the stage with a quintet of female performers and highlight how he intends to close his fourth decade as a pop, rock and country performer.

The evening was dominated by Rucker performing 16 times and flexing the depth and scope of his catalog of hits – including his beloved cover of Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel," the night's closer.

Rocker Sheryl Crow also preceded a show-stopping, bluesy electric-guitar-laden performance from Lindsay Ell and other Nashville favorites, including 2000s country superstar Sara Evans ("Man, she can SANG," said Rucker) and notable current performers Caylee Hammack and Rachel Wammack.

From his two decades spent as the frontman of rock band Hootie and the Blowfish, Rucker offered "Let Her Cry," from the band's platinum-selling 1994 debut album, "Cracked Rear View."

Humorously, he recalled developing the hit after a night of playing the John Madden Football video game on the Sega Genesis after a drunken bender in Columbia, South Carolina.

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The soundtrack for that evening, he said, was hearing the Black Crowes' debut album single "She Talks to Angels" at nearly a dozen different bars, then coming home and putting on Bonnie Raitt's 1975 album "Home Plate." The latter includes the heartbreaking J.D. Souther penned "Run Like a Thief."

Also, he offered previews of his forthcoming sixth country album, including the single "Same Beer, Different Problem" and a Hammack duet, "Never Been."

To the surprise of the crowd at the Ryman Auditorium, Rucker also donned a white tuxedo jacket and was joined by a brass quartet for jazzy takes on Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind" and "Come Fly With Me," plus Amy Winehouse's Mark Ronson-written 2007 hit "Valerie."

As for Crow, he recalled watching VH1 during Hootie and the Blowfish's breakout year of 1994 and being awed by the now Nashville resident, who broke as a mainstream star the same year.

She offered nothing from 1994's "Tuesday Night Music Club" Monday evening. Instead, "If It Makes You Happy" and "Every Day Is A Winding Road" from her self-titled 1996 follow-up, plus her most recent No. 1, 2003's "The First Cut Is The Deepest," was performed as a soulful duet with Rucker.

Canadian Ell followed. She weaved her three-song miniset into a take on her 2020 single "I Don't Love You." It included a bluesy, two-minute-long guitar solo that received one of the evening's warmest standing ovations.

'Darius and Friends' Set List

• Darius Rucker, “This”

• Darius Rucker, “For the First Time”

• Darius Rucker, “Same Beer Different Problem”

• Sara Evans, “Suds in the Bucket”

• Sara Evans, “Stronger”

• Sara Evans, cover of Yvonne Ellman's “If I Can’t Have You”

• Darius Rucker, “Alright”

• Darius Rucker, “Come Back Song”

• Rachel Wammack, “Bless Your Little Heart”

• Rachel Wammack, “People Pleasing”

• Rachel Wammack, cover of Miranda Lambert’s “Little Red Wagon”

• Darius Rucker, “Homegrown Honey”

• Darius Rucker, “If I Told You”

• Darius Rucker performing Hootie & the Blowfish's “Hold My Hand”

• Caylee Hammack, “Family Tree”

• Caylee Hammack, “Forged in the Fire”

• Caylee Hammack, Johnny Cash cover “Folsom Prison Blues”

• Darius Rucker and Caylee Hammack duet, “Never Been”

• Darius Rucker performing Hootie & the Blowfish's “Let Her Cry”

• Darius Rucker, “Beers and Sunshine”

• Sheryl Crow, “If It Makes You Happy”

• Sheryl Crow and Darius Rucker duet, “The First Cut is the Deepest”

• Sheryl Crow, “Everyday is a Winding Road”

• Darius Rucker, Frank Sinatra cover “Summer Wind”

• Darius Rucker, Frank Sinatra cover "Come Fly With Me"

• Lindsay Ell, “Right On Time”

• Lindsay Ell, “I Don’t Love You”

• Lindsay Ell, Stevie Wonder cover “Superstition”

• Darius Rucker, cover of Amy Winehouse's “Valerie”

• Darius Rucker, “Wagon Wheel”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Darius Rucker show at Ryman benefits St. Jude: Sheryl Crow performs