ARTIST

Randy Travis

Randy Travis, like the Beatles in rock, defines the coming of a musical era. Listen to any country radio station today, and you'll hear only a handful of acts who recorded before he did, and almost never will you hear a song recorded before Travis came on the scene. In the mid-'80s, as Nashville struggled over the passing of the Urban Cowboy fad and tried harder and harder to cross over into pop, Travis came along with a classic hard-country sound reminiscent of George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Lefty Frizzell and, more than any other performer of his time, brought country back to its roots.

Born Randy Bruce Traywick, on May 4, 1959, in Marshville, North Carolina, he performed as Randy Traywick and Randy Ray before settling on the stage name Randy Travis. He washed dishes at a Nashville nightclub while waiting for his break, which came when he signed to Warner Bros. and released his first single in 1985. As big as Garth Brooks was in the early '90s, Travis was in the late '80s. His debut album, Storms Of Life, almost single-handedly revived the country format in 1986, and the follow-up, Always & Forever, sold more than 5 million copies. He won the Country Music Association's Horizon Award in 1986 and in the following two years won both the CMA's award for male vocalist and Grammys for his albums Always And Forever and Old 8x10.

Travis has toured and recorded less frequently of late (he has released only three albums since his two-volume Greatest Hits in 1992), and in 1997 ended his 11-year association with Warner Bros. Records (his next album, You And You Alone, would be the first release for DreamWorks Nashville). He spends much of his time in Hawaii, and also has pursued a second career in film, with roles in a number of Westerns and the adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker.

Written by Brian Mansfield