Country Singer-Songwriter Peter Cooper Suffers Head Injury

Peter Cooper’s family are asking for thoughts and prayers after the veteran member of the country music community suffered a head injury that was initially thought to be life-threatening. How he sustained the injury is not currently known. But the family released a statement on Dec. 3, Saving Country Music reports. “He has experienced some minor improvements over the last 24 hours, but remains in critical condition,” the statement reads. There is no word currently when and where Cooper was hurt either, but his family says he needs “time and space to heal.” Fans and his country music peers are rallying to support the beloved historian.

“I talked to Peter last weekend and saw him in the hospital yesterday,” author, manager and publicist Tamara Saviano said in her own statement. “Lindsay Hayes and I were together talking about Peter when he opened his eyes and started responding to questions (with movement, he’s on a ventilator) and he clearly knew we were there. Seeing those responses has given me so much hope. We need a Christmas miracle here and maybe we will get one.”

Cooper is known primarily from his bylines in The Tennessean and other outlets as a music journalist. The South Carolina native fell in love with music as a teenager. He wrote his first music review as a senior at Wofford College after seeing a Guy Clark show.

He then moved to Nashville in 2000 and began writing for The Tennessean, writing columns and news stories that introduced artists, becoming culturally specific in history and creating his own historical moments, including writing the inscription on the tombstone of George Jones. He was also called out by Toby Keith over a misconstrued Kris Kristofferson quote. Cooper infamously defended Taylor Swift in 2010 after her off-key Grammy Awards performance.