Dwight Yoakam is 58 years old today. A singer-songwriter, actor and film director, Yoakam is best known for his pioneering country music. Popular since the early 1980s, he has recorded more than twenty-one albums and compilations, charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts and sold more than 25 million records. Yoakam was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, the son of Ruth Ann, a key-punch operator, and David Yoakam, a gas-station owner. He was raised in Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Columbuss Northland High School in 1974. During his high school years, he excelled in both music and drama, regularly securing the lead role in school plays, such as Charlie in a stage version of Flowers for Algernon, honing his skills under the guidance of teacher-mentors Jerry McAfee (music) and Charles Lewis (drama). Outside of school, Yoakam sang and played guitar with local garage bands, and entertained his friends and classmates with his impersonations, such as Richard Nixon, who, at the time, was heavily embroiled in the Watergate controversy. Yoakam briefly attended Ohio State University, but dropped out and moved to Nashville in 1977 with the intent of becoming a recording artist. When he began his career, Nashville was oriented toward pop Urban Cowboy music, and Yoakams brand of hip Honky Tonk music was not considered marketable. Not making much headway in Nashville, Yoakam moved to Los Angeles and worked towards bringing his particular brand of new Honky Tonk or Hillbilly music (as he called it) forward into the 1980s. Writing all his own songs, and continuing to perform mostly outside traditional country music channels, Yoakam did many shows in rock and punk rock clubs around Los Angeles, playing with roots rock or punk rock acts like The Blasters (Yoakam scored a small video hit with his version of their song Long White Cadillac), Los Lobos and X. Yoakams recording debut was the self-financed EP Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. on independent label Oak Records produced by lead-guitarist Pete Anderson; this was later re-released by Reprise records, with several additional tracks, as his major-label debut LP, 1986s Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. It launched his career. Honky Tonk Man,” a remake of the Johnny Horton song, and Guitars, Cadillacs were hit singles. His stylish video Honky Tonk Man was the first country music video ever played on MTV. The follow-up LP, Hillbilly Deluxe, was just as successful. His third LP, Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room, included his first No. 1, a duet with his musical idol, Buck Owens, on Streets of Bakersfield.” Johnny Cash once cited Yoakam as his favorite country singer. Chris Isaak called him as good a songwriter that ever put a pen to paper. Time Magazine dubbed Yoakam A Renaissance Man and Vanity Fair declared that Yoakam strides the divide between rocks lust and countrys lament. Along with his bluegrass and honky-tonk roots, Yoakam has written or covered many Elvis Presley-style rockabilly songs, including his covers of Queens Crazy Little Thing Called Love in 1999 and Presleys Suspicious Minds in 1992. Yoakam has also starred in many films, most notably in critically acclaimed performances as an ill-tempered, abusive, live-in boyfriend in Sling Blade (1996), as a psychopathic killer in Panic Room (2002), as a police detective in Hollywood Homicide (2003) and as the sheriff in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005). Here, Yoakam performs a medley of his hits at the Grand Ole Opry.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 10:28:45 +0000
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