|
 If
there's one guy performing now who's got guaranteed entry into the
Country Music Hall Of Fame, it's George Strait. Strait doesn't live in
Nashville, and he rarely grants interviews. Instead, he just steadily
puts out quality country albums at the rate of one about every 10
months. He's survived the Urban Cowboy fallout and the rise of rockin'
country without drastically altering his style of music, a vision that's
rooted in the classic Texas sounds of Bob Wills and Lefty Frizzell.
Born May 18, 1952, in Poteet, Texas, Strait started a country band in
the late '70s after leaving the army. He recorded briefly for Dallas's D
Records, but had his first national hit, "Unwound," with MCA in 1981. He
has remained with MCA ever since, topping the singles chart more than
two dozen times and selling about 40 million albums. A recent count
ranked his boxed set, Strait Out Of The Box, as one of the three
best-selling sets of all time (with Led Zeppelin and Bruce Springsteen).
Strait was a regular award-winner from 1985 to 1990, when he had 11
consecutive number one singles: He won the Country Music Association's
Entertainer Of The Year twice, Male Vocalist twice, and Album Of The
Year (Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind) once during that period. In
1992, he starred in the film Pure Country, and then in 1996 he returned
to the CMA winner's circle, taking top album (Blue Clear Sky), single
("Check Yes Or No"), and male vocalist honors from the CMA. He has
remained a big winner ever since, scooping up Album Of The Year (for
Carrying Your Love With Me and Male Vocalist Of The Year honors in 1997,
the Male Vocalist Of The Year award again in 1998, and the Vocal Event
Of The Year award in 2000 for his duet with Alan Jackson, "Murder On
Music Row." In 1998, Strait launched his hugely successful annual
allstar tour, the George Strait Country Music Festival, which culminated
in the early 2003 release of his first live album, For The Last
Time--Live From The Astrodome.
George Strait Links
Today's young male
country singers may try to sound like George Jones or Merle Haggard, but
they all model themselves after Strait. And Strait invariably outclasses
them all. "Sometimes you wonder," USA Today critic David Zimmerman once
wrote, "Is country music getting worse or is Strait just getting better
and better?" |
