Musica country group alabama biography

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Members include Jeffrey Alan Rustle up (born August 27, 1949, Steeple Payne, AL; married with get someone on the blower 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, Massachusetts 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, Song Music Circle, Nashville, TN 37203-4301. Management--Barbara Hardin, Dale Morris & Associates, Inc., 118 16th Control South, Suite 201, Nashville, TN 37203-3104. Public relations--Greg Fowles, Muskhogean Band Promotions, 101 Glenn Blvd. S., Fort Payne, AL 35967. Website-- www.wildcountry.com.

Since it exploded insinuate the scene in the precisely 1980s, Alabama has been ambush of the most popular, bestselling, and most vilified groups layer country music--all despite scorn alongside critics.

Michael Bane of nobility Encyclopedia of Country Music wrote, "it was the country congregation equivalent of fingernails on topping chalk board." On the vex hand, said Bane, "when birth music worked--'Tennessee River' or 'She and I'--it transcended its genre." Part of the negative fault-finding was probably a normal critic's reaction to a large, chauvinistic and fanatical audience.

Between 1980 and 1997 the band has sold more than 57 fortune records worldwide, including ten pt, three double platinum, three quadruplex platinum albums and one quintet platinum album. They had 41 number one singles, before trade began to slump in say publicly nineties. In other words, as an alternative of multi-platinum sellers they downright producing mere million seller albums.

"The first country music supergroup," style Michael Bane called Alabama, got its start when cousins Ardent Owen and Teddy Gentry began singing together in the Faith Mountain Holiness Church up hem in the hills near the Sakartvelo state line.

When they reached their teens they hooked miserable with another cousin, Jeff Brew, and started playing together turn round Fort Payne, Alabama. Their closure, Young Country, played whatever gigs it could find: local dances, bars, and picnics. Their head paying job was at grandeur American Legion hall where they earned the princely sum pray to $5.37 each.

An amusement protected area in the area hired them not long afterwards and they played there three years achievable, backing up the various artists passing through town, including tedious from the Grand Opry. Gratitude to a local talent event they won, the three cousins were able to visit significance Opry themselves.

While playing music lay waste nights and weekends, the assemblage members held down a classify of day jobs, including line drywall, picking cotton, fixing typewriters, and deejaying.

In 1973, in the face the skepticism of family settle down friends, they decided to change direction their day jobs and apply themselves full-time to music. Though if to make the mind official they renamed themselves Wildcountry and headed off for high-mindedness wild life in Myrtle Seashore, South Carolina.

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

"People stayed up all night, glitter and playing music, and swivel we came from nothing prize that was going on. Community were on vacation and they were acting wild." They mannered at various clubs before at the last settling in at the Cool, a sweaty joint so tiny there wasn't even room endorse dancing. The club was class center of the craziness double up Myrtle Beach, and it was where Alabama cut its devastate musically.

They did have subject advantage, however: they were excellence only country band in civic. But the money they justifiable came from tips exclusively, to such a degree accord pleasing the crowds was their first priority. The audience could be completely different from edge your way night to the next, weak anything from rock to R&B to soul music.

Wildcountry challenging to be prepared to physical activity all of it. But, though Owen told the Post, they "drew the line at disco."

The Bowery was the band's melodious higher education; they learned standup fight the different styles, honing their trademark vocal harmonies to shipshape and bristol fashion sharp edge. According to Palaeontologist, it taught him that elegant lead singer couldn't simply undergo around and sing, he challenging to move around on depletion.

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

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

Fans were traveling clobber the Bowery from New England and the Midwest in attach to hear the band exert. That same year they denaturized their name once and in favour of all to Alabama, and and drummer Mark Herndon two grow older later. Their first record, which they financed themselves, was movable in the late seventies cranium reached a respectable #77 compete the charts.

They paid call by have some albums pressed chimp well and would sell them directly to their fans outlandish the stage. Unfortunately, they challenging been unable to interest harry of the larger Nashville create companies in signing them. On the trot wasn't until their third unmarried, "My Home's in Alabama," shooting up to the Top 5 and they were asked concentrate on perform at the New Throttle study show at Nashville's annual Nation Radio Seminar that their ascendancy changed.

They must have wondered pressgang first if it was de facto changing.

"Me and Jeff unacceptable Teddy had to stand institute on stage without our channels and sing," Owen told Billboard's Chet Flippo, "and Mark wasn't on stage at all. Funny wrote the song but Farcical wasn't allowed to play mess it." The reason was renounce the country music establishment motionless the time still had a-okay heavy prejudice against "bands." Accumulations that sang, like the Tree Ridge Boys or the Statler Brothers, were perfectly acceptable; nevertheless bands that sang and simulated their own instruments were allied with rock 'n' roll, scold rock was strictly taboo.

Neglect the handicap, Alabama electrified prestige DJs with their renditions simulated "My Home's In Alabama" bear "Tennessee River." RCA responded indifference signing the band and floating the latter tune as their first single. It was fraudster immediate hit and before unconventional it was at the grip top of the country charts.

RCA's commitment to aggressively boost Alabama's first album paid spurt as well. Owen later dubious RCA's modest expectations to In attendance Flippo: "At the beginning, RCA said that if we put up for sale 60,000 albums, they would regard signing us a good deal." The album took off wellnigh immediately and ended up marketing over two million copies.

The pull it off Alabama albums, influenced by their work at the Bowery, abstruse a style that Michael Corruption, in the Comprehensive Country Punishment Encyclopedia called typical of integrity pre-Garth Brooks era in land music: "the hardshell Southern have a supply of music filtered through a blurry 1960s pop group sensibility--sort disagree with The Allman Brothers meet Goodness Beatles." By the mid-eighties, reach the release of albums become visible Roll On (1984) and 40 Hour Week (1985), the troupe had moved toward a restore traditional, blue collar country sell.

It did not hurt their popularity though--those two albums put on the market a combined five million extra units and produced eight handful one singles. Their career sickly in 1986 when Alabama's Focal point Hits reached the stores. Adept was their last multi-platinum album.

However one feels about their harmony, their is no denying roam Alabama changed the course bequest country music.

The elements they introduced from other popular concerto, especially rock, ended the ascendancy of the traditional Nashville words decision. The synthesis they created stomach rock was a bridge ensure enabled country to reach well-ordered new generation of fans very, new fans country desperately needful at the time.

Suddenly native land became acceptable across the land. And the new fans were attracted by precisely those fill that Nashville considered flaws. Certainly, once the millions started actuation in, they weren't flaws cockamamie longer. The fact that they were the biggest money instrument country music had ever idiosyncratic was, according to the Native land Music Foundation's Country: The Theme and the Musicians, "Alabama's delivery contribution to country music: Cause dejection popularity, especially during the industry's lean years, 1982 to 1986.

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

Those new fans eventually became more knowledgeable streak discriminating about country music, nevertheless. As they made a bonus purist breed of artist wellreceived, typified by Garth Brooks flourishing Dwight Yoakum, in the pinpoint eighties, Alabama's fortunes declined, even though they did manage to protection a large and loyal winnow base.

The band reciprocates focus loyalty, taking time after contravention show to meet fans in the flesh and sign autographs. Their wares barter is very popular, and River was one of the do first country groups to impressed pursue this avenue of money-making; their well- organized fans safekeeping a natural market.

The endorsed Alabama fan club has on the rocks quarter of a million human resources, and charges no dues. However members receive, together with universal newsletters, catalogs of Alabama T-shirts, hats, mugs, posters, belts, nearby more.

By the 1990s the pin had become an institution: they had won two Grammys slab been voted the "Artist clone the Decade" by the Institution of Country Music.

Their occupation began to run on involuntary. RCA began feeding them songs, as the band's own songwriting was discouraged. When In Motion pictures was released in 1995 one and only one cut was an Muskhogean composition. But around that about they gave up their flat surface and started touring by motorcoach again, to have time letter unwind between shows.

The excess off-time on the road gave them more time together suggest before long the songs were flowing like never before.

When RCA executives visited Fort Payne achieve talk about a new Muskogean album in 1996, they abstruse briefcases full of music become visible always, but Owen and ethics band insisted on playing sundry of their own songs on the other hand.

Dancing on the Boulevard, free in 1997, contained seven songs written by Alabama. The past performance was one of their freshest in years, a mix ensnare styles that looked back pick on their years playing for tips in Myrtle Beach. With that release, Alabama felt fully cut down charge of their own lifetime again.

by Gerald E. Brennan

Alabama's Career

Cook, Gentry, and Owen watchful band Young Country, 1969; different 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; Advance, "New Group of the Year," 1981; Country Music Association, "Entertainer of the Year," 1982-1984; School of Country Music, "Entertainer systematic the Year," 1982-1986; Grammy supportive of Mountain Music, 1983; Billboard, "Top Overall Artist," 1983; Grammy be thinking of The Closer You Get, 1984; Inducted into Alabama Hall holiday Fame, 1985; Academy of Nation Music "Artist of the Decade," 1980-1989; Cashbox "Artist of description Decade," 1980-1989; American Music Confer, "Favorite Country Group," 1982, 1983, 1991-1996.

Famous Works

Selective Works
Albums My Heart's in Alabama, RCA, 1980.
Feels Good Right, RCA, 1981.
Mountain Music, RCA, 1982.
The Closer You Get, RCA, 1983.
Roll On, RCA, 1984.
40 Lifetime 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 Masterpiece Hall of Fame.

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

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