Randy Travis - Biography
By Jonny Whiteside
When country singer Randy Travis released his debut album, Storms of Life (1986 Warner), he was a relatively unknown performer who had recently been working as a cook at a Nashville nightclub. But by the following year, the record had sold so many copies so fast that it compelled Billboard magazine to entirely change the way they tracked record sales, adopting the Sound Scan method to accurately report what turned out to be one of the biggest multi-platinum smashes in country music. It was an auspicious start for Travis, whose own personal life had been a slice of honky tonk hell-raising, replete with criminal activity, more than a few arrests, and stints in juvenile detention. He went on to attain the greatest acclaim of the pre-Garth Brooks era, and along the way recorded with country music's royalty (George Jones, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, and Tammy Wynette). Travis sold 20 million records, racked up 22 number one country hits and a staggering trove of awards: five from Nashville's Country Music Association, nine from Los Angeles' Academy of Country Music and ten from the Dick Clark-instituted American Music Awards. Yet, by the late 1990's, Travis was almost washed up. He was without a record deal, and seemed a ghost of his former hard country self--a bizarre state of affairs which only hardened his resolve, and for a time, led to an exclusively spiritual music career. After an eight year absence, Travis returned to country music with Around the Bend (2008 Warner).
Born Randy Bruce Traywick in Marshville, North Carolina on May 4, 1959, the kid grew up with country music fan parents and idolized hard-living honky tonk stars Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, Ernest Tubb and Merle Haggard. He was singing and playing guitar by age eight, and at ten, had formed a duo with elder brother Ricky that played local functions as often as they could. The family moved to Charlotte in 1975, where Travis entered, and won, the talent contest at a local nightclub-restaurant, Lib Hatcher's Country City USA Club. At age 16, he secured a steady two nights a week gig there, and owner Hatcher quickly took a fancy to the darkly handsome teen. Onstage, Travis seemed to combine Hank Williams fatalistic intensity with Ricky Nelson's ingenuous charm--a striking presentation of masculine sensitivity that was not lost on Hatcher. Soon, she was employing him full-time as both entertainer and dishwasher, and initiated what turned out to be one of modern hillbilly culture's more lurid and longest-running soap operas.
As a teenager--like his avowed idols--Travis had developed a taste for booze and boosting cars for joyrides, which led to frequent scrapes with the law; one escapade, a 135 mile per hour police pursuit that ended when Travis crashed his brother's car into a cornfield, left him facing a five year prison sentence. But local politics and jurisprudence being what they are in some parts of the South, Hatcher had influence enough to smooth the matter out and the boy was released to her custody. Despite the great difference in age, their relationship was a close one--so much so that Hatcher's own marriage fell apart within several years and she subsequently sold her home and business. By 1978, Hatcher, with assistance from country singer Joe Stampley, had already financed a couple of singles for Travis, but they failed to make any impact.
The pair, of course, moved to Nashville, where Hatcher took over operation of the Nashville Palace and continued using Travis as both performer and kitchen worker. Hatcher financed a live album recorded there Randy Ray Live (1982 Randy Ray Records), which became a valuable collector's item after Travis hit the big time, but when released got lost in the shuffle of dozens of similar, self-financed indie attempts. Although Warner Brothers had already turned Travis down (they said he was "too country") several years earlier, they took a chance and signed him in 1985, and began releasing singles under the name Randy Travis. The first was "Prairie Rose" and later, the cheatin' song, "On the Other Hand." Again, no fireworks, but the third single, the mournful "1982" quickly made the country Top Ten. It built yhe label's confidence in their too-country singer, so when they re-released "On the Other Hand" in early 1986, it went to number one, as did the follow up "Diggin' Up Bones." Turned out that his warm baritone and Lefty Frizzell-Merle Haggard inspired manner of phrasing, presented with classic steel and fiddle instrumentation, was exactly what country fans wanted and Travis was on his way.
The Storms of Life album was a triple platinum phenomenon. Travis ignited the New Traditionalists, a movement anticipated by George Strait back in '82 and one that came to include the likes of Ricky Skaggs, Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam and Alan Jackson. But Travis was the golden boy--his next album Always and Forever (1987 Warner) featured four number one singles, sold quintuple platinum and earned him a Grammy, along with more CMA and ACM male vocalist awards. The next album Old 8x10 (1988 Warner) was another solid hit, selling double platinum, with three number one singles, more Grammys, CMA and ACM awards, as was No Holdin' Back (1989 Warner). But then things started to cool. His albums were selling at respectable platinum levels, but after managing quintuple sales--and not maintaining them--Music City started to wonder what his problem was.
Travis and Hatcher wed in 1992 (which re-ignited the rumor mill that had long ground out off-color speculation about the true nature of their union), but his next release, the Western-themed Wind in the Wire (1993 Warner) was a complete stiff and did not even sell a million copies. His final album for Warner Brothers, 1996's aptly-titled Full Circle was essentially still-born, and after the label cut him loose, Travis drifted for a couple of years, making it on the road, always with Hatcher at his side. The newly formed DreamWorks label signed him on for You and You Alone (1998 DreamWorks) which had a number one country hit with "Stranger in My Mirror," and the other three singles did well (two hit #2's, the other #9) but overall the record more fizzle than sizzle.
He turned to gospel music, cranking out spiritual sets, winning shelves full of Gospel Music Association Awards and three more Grammys and was more frequently found of evangelical networks than glossy Nashville awards shows. Still, the Travis potential cried out for exploitation, and he returned to Warner Brothers in 2008, releasing Around the Bend, produced by his old ally, Kyle Lehning. An enigmatic figure whose stunning success became something of a yolk around his neck, Randy Travis, nonetheless, is one of the most significant performers of modern country music.