Country music group alabama biography of donald

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Members include Jeffrey Alan Write down (born August 27, 1949, Remain Payne, AL; married with unified child), guitar, fiddle, and vocals; Teddy Wayne Gentry (born Jan 22, 1952, Fort Payne, AL; married with two children), deep and vocals; Mark Joel Herndon (born May 11, 1955, Metropolis MA; married with one child), drums; Randy Yueull Owen (born December 13, 1949, Fort Payne, AL; married with three children), vocals and guitar.

Addresses: Home--Myrtle Beach, SC. Record company--RCA, Freshen Music Circle, Nashville, TN 37203-4301. Management--Barbara Hardin, Dale Morris & Associates, Inc., 118 16th Alley South, Suite 201, Nashville, TN 37203-3104. Public relations--Greg Fowles, River Band Promotions, 101 Glenn Blvd. S., Fort Payne, AL 35967. Website-- www.wildcountry.com.

Since it exploded impress the scene in the mistimed 1980s, Alabama has been given of the most popular, bestselling, and most vilified groups send country music--all despite scorn lump critics.

Michael Bane of interpretation Encyclopedia of Country Music wrote, "it was the country refrain equivalent of fingernails on precise chalk board." On the beat hand, said Bane, "when depiction music worked--'Tennessee River' or 'She and I'--it transcended its genre." Part of the negative deprecation was probably a normal critic's reaction to a large, steadfast and fanatical audience.

Between 1980 and 1997 the band has sold more than 57 meg records worldwide, including ten pt, three double platinum, three fourfold platinum albums and one quintette platinum album. They had 41 number one singles, before rummage sale began to slump in rectitude nineties. In other words, in lieu of of multi-platinum sellers they downright producing mere million seller albums.

"The first country music supergroup," makeover Michael Bane called Alabama, got its start when cousins Marketable Owen and Teddy Gentry began singing together in the Dissect Mountain Holiness Church up change for the better the hills near the Colony state line.

When they reached their teens they hooked far with another cousin, Jeff Falsify, and started playing together approximately Fort Payne, Alabama. Their knot, Young Country, played whatever gigs it could find: local dances, bars, and picnics. Their foremost paying job was at decency American Legion hall where they earned the princely sum be in the region of $5.37 each.

An amusement restricted area in the area hired them not long afterwards and they played there three years charge, backing up the various artists passing through town, including squat from the Grand Opry. Brownie points to a local talent well-known they won, the three cousins were able to visit decency Opry themselves.

While playing music multiplication nights and weekends, the faction members held down a number of day jobs, including cable drywall, picking cotton, fixing typewriters, and deejaying.

In 1973, disdain the skepticism of family focus on friends, they decided to net their day jobs and apply themselves full-time to music. Despite the fact that if to make the aspect official they renamed themselves Wildcountry and headed off for excellence wild life in Myrtle Shore, South Carolina.

"When we first got to Myrtle Beach it was an absolute shock," Randy Reformist told the Washington Post.

"People stayed up all night, flickering and playing music, and turn we came from nothing liking that was going on. Spread were on vacation and they were acting wild." They pretended at various clubs before in the end settling in at the Bosky, a sweaty joint so in short supply there wasn't even room purport dancing. The club was illustriousness center of the craziness divide Myrtle Beach, and it was where Alabama cut its upset musically.

They did have incontestable advantage, however: they were dignity only country band in township. But the money they justifiable came from tips exclusively, ergo pleasing the crowds was their first priority. The audience could be completely different from sole night to the next, troublesome anything from rock to R&B to soul music.

Wildcountry abstruse to be prepared to throw all of it. But, primate Owen told the Post, they "drew the line at disco."

The Bowery was the band's dulcet higher education; they learned yell the different styles, honing their trademark vocal harmonies to ingenious sharp edge. According to Paleontologist, it taught him that a-ok lead singer couldn't simply pose around and sing, he difficult to understand to move around on fastener.

And it helped build their stamina, playing the bar figure years, every night between Foot it and mid-September, five hours kismet a stretch. "We'd play 'til we got blisters. Then we'd play 'til the blisters popped," recalled Teddy Gentry in honesty Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia, "but it sure beat working distinction swing shift at the smack factory."

By 1977, they were birth most popular thing in Periwinkle Beach.

Fans were traveling contempt the Bowery from New England and the Midwest in anathema to hear the band come to pass. That same year they different their name once and lay out all to Alabama, and auxiliary drummer Mark Herndon two geezerhood later. Their first record, which they financed themselves, was unrestricted in the late seventies take reached a respectable #77 managing the charts.

They paid currency have some albums pressed bit well and would sell them directly to their fans stranger the stage. Unfortunately, they challenging been unable to interest gauche of the larger Nashville lean companies in signing them. True wasn't until their third matchless, "My Home's in Alabama," bullet up to the Top 5 and they were asked accept perform at the New Toby jug show at Nashville's annual State Radio Seminar that their success changed.

They must have wondered stroke first if it was in truth changing.

"Me and Jeff existing Teddy had to stand make somebody's acquaintance on stage without our machinery and sing," Owen told Billboard's Chet Flippo, "and Mark wasn't on stage at all. Raving wrote the song but Farcical wasn't allowed to play avowal it." The reason was defer the country music establishment indulgence the time still had nifty heavy prejudice against "bands." Assemblys that sang, like the Tree Ridge Boys or the Statler Brothers, were perfectly acceptable; on the contrary bands that sang and mincing their own instruments were corresponding with rock 'n' roll, avoid rock was strictly taboo.

Discredit the handicap, Alabama electrified grandeur DJs with their renditions get a hold "My Home's In Alabama" professor "Tennessee River." RCA responded contempt signing the band and unrestricted the latter tune as their first single. It was wish immediate hit and before make do it was at the statement top of the country charts.

RCA's commitment to aggressively encouragement Alabama's first album paid ensure as well. Owen later dubious RCA's modest expectations to Nearby Flippo: "At the beginning, RCA said that if we oversubscribed 60,000 albums, they would stroke signing us a good deal." The album took off practically immediately and ended up bargain over two million copies.

The precede Alabama albums, influenced by their work at the Bowery, abstruse a style that Michael Decay, in the Comprehensive Country Masterpiece Encyclopedia called typical of position pre-Garth Brooks era in state music: "the hardshell Southern avoid music filtered through a welldefined 1960s pop group sensibility--sort be fond of The Allman Brothers meet Picture Beatles." By the mid-eighties, accost the release of albums choose Roll On (1984) and 40 Hour Week (1985), the pin had moved toward a repair traditional, blue collar country climate.

It did not hurt their popularity though--those two albums advertise a combined five million keep steady units and produced eight delivery one singles. Their career inadequate in 1986 when Alabama's Supreme extreme Hits reached the stores. Punch was their last multi-platinum album.

However one feels about their sonata, their is no denying put off Alabama changed the course demonstration country music.

The elements they introduced from other popular meeting, especially rock, ended the capability of the traditional Nashville enduring. The synthesis they created prep added to rock was a bridge guarantee enabled country to reach a- new generation of fans as well, new fans country desperately essential at the time. Suddenly territory became acceptable across the sovereign state.

And the new fans were attracted by precisely those thrust that Nashville considered flaws. Plainly, once the millions started arise in, they weren't flaws every tom longer. The fact that they were the biggest money the death sentence country music had ever quirky was, according to the Native land Music Foundation's Country: The Punishment and the Musicians, "Alabama's longest contribution to country music: Treason popularity, especially during the industry's lean years, 1982 to 1986.

Alabama's profitability helped RCA reduce chances on newer performers snowball to keep deserving but commercially shaky acts, like Gail Davies, on the roster."

Those new fans eventually became more knowledgeable with discriminating about country music, despite that. As they made a add-on purist breed of artist in favour, typified by Garth Brooks submit Dwight Yoakum, in the entire eighties, Alabama's fortunes declined, even supposing they did manage to support a large and loyal follower base.

The band reciprocates lose one\'s train of thought loyalty, taking time after drill show to meet fans myself and sign autographs. Their stuff is very popular, and Muskogean was one of the realize first country groups to eager pursue this avenue of money-making; their well- organized fans distinctive a natural market. The defensible Alabama fan club has trim quarter of a million affiliates, and charges no dues.

On the other hand members receive, together with accepted newsletters, catalogs of Alabama T-shirts, hats, mugs, posters, belts, streak more.

By the 1990s the assemblage had become an institution: they had won two Grammys ray been voted the "Artist past it the Decade" by the Institute of Country Music. Their occupation began to run on self-acting.

RCA began feeding them songs, as the band's own songwriting was discouraged. When In Motion pictures was released in 1995 matchless one cut was an River composition. But around that generation they gave up their flat and started touring by motorbus again, to have time cross-reference unwind between shows. The added off-time on the road gave them more time together stake before long the songs were flowing like never before.

When RCA executives visited Fort Payne reach talk about a new River album in 1996, they esoteric briefcases full of music near always, but Owen and probity band insisted on playing manifold of their own songs in preference to.

Dancing on the Boulevard, at large in 1997, contained seven songs written by Alabama. The book was one of their freshest in years, a mix thoroughgoing styles that looked back be obliged to their years playing for tips in Myrtle Beach. With that release, Alabama felt fully outline charge of their own employment again.

by Gerald E. Brennan

Alabama's Career

Cook, Gentry, and Owen heedful band Young Country, 1969; contrasting name to Wildcountry, 1973; different name to Alabama, 1977; Herndon joined band, 1979.

Alabama's Awards

Cashbox "New Vocal Group of the Year" Album and Single, 1980; Elevation, "New Group of the Year," 1981; Country Music Association, "Entertainer of the Year," 1982-1984; Institution of Country Music, "Entertainer look upon the Year," 1982-1986; Grammy beg for Mountain Music, 1983; Billboard, "Top Overall Artist," 1983; Grammy sense The Closer You Get, 1984; Inducted into Alabama Hall work for Fame, 1985; Academy of Nation Music "Artist of the Decade," 1980-1989; Cashbox "Artist of character Decade," 1980-1989; American Music Premium, "Favorite Country Group," 1982, 1983, 1991-1996.

Famous Works

Selective Works
Albums My Heart's in Alabama, RCA, 1980.
Feels In this fashion Right, RCA, 1981.
Mountain Music, RCA, 1982.
The Closer You Get, RCA, 1983.
Roll On, RCA, 1984.
40 Time Week, RCA, 1986.
Alabama Christmas, RCA, 1986.
Alabama's Greatest Hits, RCA, 1986.
Cheap Seats, RCA, 1993.
In Pictures, RCA, 1995.
Dancin' on the Boulevard, RCA, 1997.

Recent Updates

August 2005: Alabama was named to the Country Song Hall of Fame.

Source:Hollywood Reporter, www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/brief_display.jsp, August 31, 2005.

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