Best Known As: Alternative country star who recorded Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.
Dwight Yoakam's rocky-tonk debut album Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. was a hit on both the pop and country charts in 1986 and established Yoakam as a sly Nashville expatriate with a California twang. Part Buck Owens and part Buddy Holly, Yoakam won a Grammy Award in 1993 for his tune "Ain't That Lonely Yet," (from the album This Time) and has won numerous awards from the Country Music Association; he is often credited with helping return country music from the slicker urban sounds of the 1970s and 1980s to its honky-tonk roots. His other albums include Hillbilly Deluxe (1987), If There Was A Way (1990), A Long Way Home (1998) and Blame the Vain (2005). As an actor, Yoakam proved to be more than a hack with his role in Billy Bob Thornton's 1996 movie Sling Blade. In 2000 he wrote, directed, starred in and composed the music for the feature South of Heaven, West of Hell, an offbeat western whose eclectic cast included Peter Fonda, Paul Reubens and Vince Vaughn.
Representative Albums: "Just Lookin' for a Hit," "This Time," "Last Chance for a Thousand Years: Greatest Hits from the 90's"
Representative Songs: "Honky Tonk Man," "Streets of Bakersfield," "Guitars, Cadillacs"
Biography
With his stripped-down approach to traditional honky tonk and Bakersfield country, Dwight Yoakam helped return country music to its roots in the late '80s. Like his idols Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, Yoakam never played by Nashville's rules; consequently, he never dominated the charts like his contemporary Randy Travis. Then again, Travis never played around with the sound and style of country music like Yoakam. On each of his records, he twists around the form enough to make it seem like he doesn't respect all of country's traditions. Appropriately, his core audience was composed mainly of roots rock and rock & roll fans, not the mainstream country audience. Nevertheless, he was frequently able to chart in the country Top Ten, and he remained one of the most respected and adventurous recording country artists well into the '90s.
Born in Kentucky but raised in Ohio, Yoakam learned how to play guitar at the age of six. As a child, he listened to his mother's record collection, honing in on the traditional country of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, as well as the Bakersfield honky tonk of Buck Owens. When he was in high school, Yoakam played with a variety of bands, playing everything from country to rock & roll. After completing high school, Yoakam briefly attended Ohio State University, but he dropped out and moved to Nashville in the late '70s with the intent of becoming a recording artist.
At the time he moved to Nashville, the town was in the throes of the pop-oriented urban cowboy movement and had no interest in his updated honky tonk. While in Nashville, he met guitarist Pete Anderson, who shared a similar taste in music. The pair moved out to Los Angeles, where they found a more appreciative audience than they did in Nashville. In L.A., Yoakam and Anderson didn't just play country clubs, they played the same nightclubs that punk and post-punk rock bands like X, the Dead Kennedys, Los Lobos, the Blasters, and the Butthole Surfers did. What Yoakam had in common with rock bands like X, the Blasters, and Los Angeles was similar musical influences; they all drew from '50s rock & roll and country. In comparison to the polished music coming out of Nashville, Yoakam's stripped-down, direct revivalism seemed radical. The cowpunks, as they were called, that attended Yoakam's shows provided an invaluable support for his fledgling career.
Yoakam released an independent EP, A Town South of Bakersfield, in 1984, which received substantial airplay on Los Angeles college and alternative radio stations. The EP also helped him land a record contract with Reprise Records. Dwight's full-length debut album, Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., was released in 1986 and was an instant sensation. Rock and country critics praised it and it earned airplay on college stations across America. More importantly, it was a hit on the country charts, as its first single, a cover of Johnny Horton's "Honky Tonk Man," climbed to number three in the spring, followed by the number four "Guitars, Cadillacs" in the summer. The album would eventually go platinum.
Hillbilly Deluxe, Dwight's 1987 follow-up, was equally successful, spawning four Top Ten hits: "Little Sister," "Little Ways," "Please, Please Baby," and "Always Late with Your Kisses." In 1988, Yoakam had his first number one hit with "Streets of Bakersfield," a cover of a Buck Owens song recorded with Owens himself. It was the first single off his third album, Buenos Noches from a Lonely Room, which continued his streak of Top Ten hits. "I Sang Dixie," the album's second single, went to number one, and "I Got You" reached number five. In 1989, Yoakam released a compilation album, Just Lookin' for a Hit, which went gold. "Long White Cadillac," taken from the collection, stalled at number 35 in the fall of 1989.
Although his 1990 album If There Was a Way didn't have as many Top Ten hits, it was a major success; it was his first album since his debut to go platinum. This Time, released in the spring of 1993, was an even bigger hit, spawning three number two singles -- "Ain't That Lonely Yet," "A Thousand Miles from Nowhere," and "Fast as You" -- and going platinum. After its release, Yoakam was silent for two years, returning in the summer of 1995 with Dwight Live, which didn't set the charts on fire. In the fall of that year, he released his sixth album, Gone, which went gold by the spring of 1996, although it didn't produce any major country hits. After 1997's Under the Covers, a collection of cover songs, Yoakam returned with the all-new A Long Way Home in 1998. Another compilation, Last Chance for a Thousand Years: Greatest Hits from the '90s, was released in 1999; its newly recorded version of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" became Yoakam's biggest hit in six years, even hitting the lower reaches of the pop charts thanks to its exposure in a khakis commercial. Two albums followed in 2000: dwightyoakamacoustic.net, a bare-bones, all-acoustic revisitation of Yoakam's back catalog; and the more standard studio project Tomorrow's Sounds Today, which featured further collaborations with Buck Owens and a cover of Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me."
In 2001, Yoakam debuted as a writer and director, also issuing the soundtrack South of Heaven, West of Hell to accompany it. Two years later, he debuted on a new label (Audium) with Population Me, while Reprise issued the compilation In Others' Words to compete with it. In 2004 he released Dwight's Used Records, a 14-track anthology of duets that appeared on other artists' albums, unreleased covers, and cuts Yoakam contributed to various tribute compilations. An album of all new material, the self-produced Blame the Vain, followed in 2005 along with the live album, Live from Austin, TX. An album of Buck Owens covers, Dwight Sings Buck, appeared in 2007. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: Sling Blade, Red Rock West, Chasers
First Major Screen Credit: Live From Austin TX: Dwight Yoakam (1988)
Biography
A top-selling country music star since the mid-'80s, multi-talented Dwight Yoakam branched out into acting in the 1990s.
Born in Kentucky, Yoakam was raised in Ohio and attended college at Ohio State University. Inspired by music since childhood, Yoakam dropped out of school to move to Nashville in the late '70s. Finding the Nashville scene less than accommodating for his interpretation of country music, Yoakam subsequently headed to Los Angeles. Striking music gold with his first album in 1986, Yoakam became a renowned country-rock singer/songwriter of the '80s and '90s.
Casting an eye on another facet of Los Angeles' entertainment world, Yoakam began acting. After appearing on TV, Yoakam played a truck driver in John Dahl's acclaimed neo-noir Red Rock West (1993); he then provided the music score for Red Rock West star Dennis Hopper's 1994 comedy Chasers. Yoakam played a larger part in the TV docudrama Roswell (1994) (not to be mistaken for the 1999 teen series). After moving to a starring role as a rodeo clown in the action movie Painted Hero (1995), Yoakam earned critical raves for his intense performance as an abusive drunk in Billy Bob Thornton's Oscar-winning drama Sling Blade (1996). Yoakam again garnered positive notices (though the movie did not) as a humble safecracking associate of the titular gang in The Newton Boys (1998). Sticking with off-center screen fare, Yoakam subsequently starred as one of the detectives that Owen Wilson's serial killer Van imagines is stalking him in Hampton Fancher's idiosyncratic crime story The Minus Man (1999). Aiming to try more creative pursuits, Yoakam wrote and directed, as well as scored and starred in, his next film, South of Heaven, West of Hell (2000). Yoakam returned to acting in David Fincher's thriller The Panic Room (2001).
Yet despite his neverending drive to entertain, it wasn't all showbiz for the former country-boy made good, and in early 2006 Yoakam would team up with Modern Foods to produce his very own line of southern-flavored frozen foods. With products such as Dwight Yoakam's Chicken Lickin's Chicken Fries, Lanky Links Pork, Sausage Links, and Boom Boom Shrimp, the Grammy-winning recording artist and increasingly popular actor would do his very best to ensure that his fans were well fed. A 2005 new album entitled Blame the Vain found Yoakam recapturing the energy and intensity that defined his earliest and best musical efforts, and following a role as a neglectful sheriff in Tommy Lee Jones' The Three Buriels of Melquaides Estrada and a rare comedic turn in Wedding Crashers, Yoakam sould next be seen in the edge-of-your-seat assassin-on-the-run action thriller Crank. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Dwight David Yoakam (born October 23, 1956) is an Americansinger-songwriter and actor, most famous for his country music. Active since the early 1980s, he has recorded more than twenty albums and compilations, and has charted more than thirty singles on the BillboardHot Country Songs charts.
Yoakam was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, the son of Ruth Ann, a key-punch operator, and David Yoakam, a gas-station owner.[1] He was raised in Columbus, Ohio, growing up with his mother and stepfather, who had a white-collar job in the automotive industry. He graduated from Columbus' Northland High School on June 9, 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 frequently entertained his friends and classmates as an amateur comedian, impersonating politicians and other celebrities, such as Richard Nixon, who, at that time, was heavily embroiled in the Watergate controversy.
Dwight Yoakam collaborator Pete Anderson - Live in Concert
Not making much headway in Nashville, Yoakam moved to Los Angeles. Teaming up with lead guitarist and producer Pete Anderson, Yoakam worked towards bringing traditional, Honky Tonk or "Hillbilly" music (as he himself called it) forward into the 1980s. Yoakam wrote most of his songs himself, while Anderson had a hand in arranging the songs and shaping their direction. Anderson can be heard playing Hooker-inspired licks on Yoakam's cover of "Honky Tonk Man", on his debut album. Anderson left Yoakam's band to focus full-time on producing.
Continuing to perform mostly outside traditional country music channels, Yoakam did many shows in Rock and Punk clubs around Los Angeles, playing with roots rock or punk rock acts like The Blasters (Yoakam scored a small hit with his version of their song "Long White Cadillac"), Los Lobos, and X.[citation needed] This helped him diversify his audience well beyond the typical Country music fans.
Yoakam's recording debut was on the compilation albumA Town South of Bakersfield, which was a collection of "New Country" artists who were based in Los Angeles, and was planned and produced by Pete Anderson in 1984. He released an E.P. on independent label Oak Records; this was later re-released, with several additional tracks, as his major-label debut LP, 1986's Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.. It launched his career. "Honky Tonk Man," a remake of the Johnny Horton song, and "Guitars, Cadillacs" were hit singles. The follow-up LP, Hillbilly Deluxe, was just as successful. His third LP, Buenas Noches From a Lonely Room, included his first #1, a duet with his musical idol, Buck Owens, on "Streets of Bakersfield". 1990's If There Was a Way was another best-seller.
Yoakam's song "Readin', Rightin', Route 23" pays tribute to his childhood move from Kentucky, and is named after a local expression describing the route that rural Kentuckians took to take to find a job outside of the coal mines. (U.S. Route 23 runs north from Kentucky through Columbus and Toledo, Ohio and through the automotive centers of Michigan.) Rather than the standard line that their elementary schools taught "the three Rs" of "Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic", Kentuckians used to say that the three Rs they learned were "Readin', 'Ritin, and Route 23 North"!
Having diverged from pop-icon status in country-western fare, Yoakam is today more likely to be identified as having an older, more traditional style.[citation needed]Johnny Cash once cited Yoakam as his favorite country singer.[2] Along with his bluegrass and honky-tonk roots, Yoakam has written or covered many Elvis Presley-style rockabilly songs, including his covers of Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" in 1999 and Presley's "Suspicious Minds" in 1992. He recorded a cover of the Clash's "Train in Vain" in 1997, a cover of the Grateful Dead song "Truckin'", as well as Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me". Yoakam has never been associated only with Country music; on many early tours, he played with Hardcore Punk bands like Hüsker Dü, and played many shows around Los Angeles with Roots/Punk/Rock & Roll acts. His middle-period-to-later records saw him branching out to different styles, covering Rock & Roll, Punk, 1960's, Blues-based "Boogie" like ZZ Top, and writing more adventurous songs like "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere". In 2003, he provided background vocals on Warren Zevon's last album The Wind.
In the 21st century, Yoakam released dwightyoakamacoustic.net, a record featuring solo acoustic versions of many of his hits; left his major label and started his own label. His latest album of all-new tracks is 2005's Blame the Vain, on New West Records. Yoakam also released an album dedicated to Buck Owens, Dwight Sings Buck, on October 23, 2007.
Yoakam is currently finishing work on a new album, the follow-up to 2005's "Blame The Vain", expected in 2010
On November 7, 2007, the CMA presented Yoakam the International Artist Achievement Award.[4] Yoakam was inducted into the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame in 2008.[5]
Country Music, a 2008 poetry collection by Allen Hoey, mentions Yoakam directly in several poems, uses titles of a couple of Yoakam's songs as titles of poems, and dedicates one poem to Yoakam.
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