Take Kid Rock, Hank Williams Jr and Toby Keith, mix with a little "Dirty South" rap influence, and what you get is Colt Ford, former golf pro-turned-country music's first legitimate rap star. His debut album, "Ride Through The Country", came out in 2008, featuring some of his friends and influences, from country stars Jamey Johnson and John Michael Montgomery to rapper Bonecrusher and RnB artist Attitude.
Proclaimed the International Ambassador of Country Music thanks to his world tours in the '70s, George Hamilton IV began his career in the late '50s as a teen-oriented pop star. After his first hit, "A Rose and a Baby Ruth," hit number six on the pop charts in 1956, he toured with Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. However, his later pop efforts stalled on the charts, and in 1959, Hamilton joined the Grand Ole Opry.
Patsy Cline (September 8, 1932 – March 5, 1963) was an American country music singer. Born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Winchester, Virginia, United States, she received her first contract as a country singer in 1953 and, despite her short life, would become one of the most influential singers in the history of American popular music. Cline was the last name of her first husband, Gerald Cline, a construction industry mogul, whom she married in 1953 and divorced in 1957.
Gene Watson (born October 11, 1943) is an American country singer. He is most famous for his 1975 hit "Love in the Hot Afternoon" and his 1982 hit "Fourteen Carat Mind."
Biography
Watson was born in Palestine, Texas, in 1943 and began his music career in the early 1970s, performing in local clubs at night while working in a Houston auto body shop during the day. He only recorded for a few small, regional record labels until 1974, when Capitol Records picked up his album Love in the Hot Afternoon and released it nationally.
Glen Campbell (April 22, 1936 in Delight, Arkansas) is an American pop-country singer and guitarist, best known for a series of hits in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as for hosting a television variety show. Much like George Benson in the jazz world, Campbell's emerging vocal abilities eventually overshadowed his much-admired musical skills as a guitarist and changed the expected course of his career.
Born to poor sharecroppers, one of eleven children in Sledge, Mississippi, Pride is a timeless everyman, revered by his musical peers and adored by countless millions of fans around the globe. Charley Pride unofficially started his music career in the late 1950s as a ballplayer with the Negro American League’s Memphis Red Sox singing and playing guitar on the team bus between ballparks. Self-taught on a guitar bought at the age 14 from Sears Roebuck, Pride would join various bands onstage as he and the team roved the country.
Margaret LeAnn Rimes (born August 28, 1982, in Jackson, Mississippi) is a popular American country and pop music singer. Rimes emerged with her first single, "Blue," when she was just thirteen years old in 1996. She is most recognized for her crossover hit "How Do I Live" which, according to the Billboard charts, is one of the most successful songs in American music history, spending 69 weeks on the charts, more than any other song in American history. While country singer Trisha Yearwood's version of the song won a Grammy in 1998, Rimes' version outsold Yearwood's by millions of copies.
Valerie June Carter (June 23, 1929 – May 15, 2003), later June Carter Cash, was a singer, songwriter, actress, a member of the first family of country music, The Carter Family, and the second wife of singer Johnny Cash. She played the guitar, banjo, and autoharp. As a singer, she had both a solo career and a career singing with, first, her family, and later, her husband. As a solo artist, she became somewhat successful with upbeat country tunes of the 1950s like "Juk". In 1962, she and Merle Kilgore wrote Ring Of Fire, made famous by Johnny Cash.
Lonnie Donegan MBE (29 April 1931