Where Is Ella Langley From? Her Hope Hull, Alabama Roots

Ella Langley is from Hope Hull, Alabama — a small community just south of Montgomery — and this week a local teacher reminded everyone where the whole thing started. Before the twelve ACM trophies, before "Choosin' Texas" spent its 16th week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, she was a kid in Hope Hull with a guitar and a standing Friday-morning date to play a few songs before the first bell.

The Hope Hull, Alabama, kid behind the country star

That teacher is Maury Popwell — "Coach Pop" to pretty much everyone at Hooper Academy, the school in Hope Hull where he's spent 22 of his 57 years in the classroom. Years ago, one of his students was Ella. As WSFA in Montgomery reported, the two of them bonded fast over the same three things: horses, music, and a willingness to show up early. "We got to the point where she would bring her guitar on a Friday morning and we would play before school," Popwell said.

He brought a 12-string to those sessions, and Ella fell for the sound of it — that big, ringing, slightly out-of-focus jangle you can't get out of a six-string. If you've listened closely to how her records layer acoustic guitars, it's not hard to hear where the ear for it came from.

The 12-string that went to Nashville

Here's the part that gets you. When Ella told Coach Pop she was leaving for Nashville to chase it for real, he didn't give her a pep talk. He gave her the guitar.

"When I found out she was going to Nashville, I called her right before school started and I told her come by the school today, and she did," Popwell told WSFA. "I gave her that guitar. So she took it with her."

That's the kind of small, enormous gesture that a career gets built on top of without anyone outside the room ever knowing. The two have stayed close through all of it. She once pulled him up on stage during a show in Birmingham — a moment he says he'll never forget — and he's admitted to catching himself teary-eyed watching her collect awards from the couch back home. "It affects me like she is my grandchild," he said. "It's like she's part of my family. And she is."

She's about to come home

The timing of the story isn't an accident. Ella brings the Dandelion Tour back to Alabama at the end of the month for a two-night homecoming stand at Neville Arena in Auburn on August 28 and 29, with ERNEST and Gabriella Rose on the bill, according to Auburn Athletics. For a lot of people in and around Montgomery, this isn't a concert so much as a hometown-girl-makes-good weekend, and you can bet Coach Pop will be somewhere in that building. Update: he was — and Ella closed the loop. At the sold-out Auburn shows she pulled Coach Pop backstage and surprised him with a custom guitar of his own, signed and carrying her Dandelion artwork — the student handing a guitar back to the teacher who once gave her his. We put together everything you need for the trip on our Auburn show guide, and if you're still deciding on a fit, here's what to wear to an Ella Langley concert.

It also reframes the song that made her a household name. "Choosin' Texas" is a leaving song — but the woman singing it is proudly, permanently from Hope Hull, Alabama, and she's spent this whole run making sure the people who got her started know they're part of it. If you want the clearest statement of that pride, it's the title track of her album — our breakdown of the Ella Langley "Dandelion" meaning unpacks how she turns "the 'Bama in my veins" into a whole self-portrait. A history teacher with a 12-string turns out to be a pretty good origin story for one of country music's biggest years.