Dwight Yoakam is an American country music singer-songwriter and actor. He has recorded more than 30 albums, 13 of which have been certified gold or higher by the RIAA. His singles include “Pancho & Lefty”, “Honky Tonk Man” and “Guitars, Cadillacs.”
Dwight Yoakam is an American singer-songwriter, actor, and film director. He has released more than 20 albums with hits like Guitars, Cadillacs, Swingin’, and A Thousand Miles.
Dwight Yoakam helped restore country music to its origins in the late 1980s with his stripped-down approach to classic honky tonk and Bakersfield country. Yoakam, like his heroes Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams, never followed Nashville’s norms, and as a result, he was never as successful as his contemporary Randy Travis. Travis, unlike Yoakam, never experimented with the sound and style of country music. He bends the form sufficiently on each of his recordings to make it seem as though he doesn’t respect all of country’s customs. His primary following, appropriately, was mostly made up of lovers of roots rock and rock & roll, rather than the conventional country audience. Despite this, he was able to chart in the country Top Ten on a regular basis, and he remained one of the most renowned and experimental recording country singers well into the 1990s.
Yoakam, who was born in Kentucky but reared in Ohio, began playing guitar at the age of six. He grew up listening to his mother’s record collection, focusing on Hank Williams and Johnny Cash’s classic country, as well as Buck Owens’ Bakersfield honky tonk. Yoakam used to perform in a variety of bands in high school, covering everything from country to rock & roll. Yoakam briefly attended Ohio State University after graduating from high school, but he left out and went to Nashville in the late 1970s to pursue a career as a recording artist.
Nashville was in the midst of the pop-oriented urban cowboy trend at the time he came there, and he had little interest in his modernized honky tonk. In Nashville, he met guitarist Pete Anderson, with whom he had similar musical tastes. The couple relocated to Los Angeles, where they found a more receptive audience than in Nashville. Yoakam and Anderson didn’t only play country clubs in Los Angeles; they also performed the same nightclubs as X, the Dead Kennedys, Los Lobos, the Blasters, and the Butthole Surfers. Yoakam shared musical inspirations with rock bands such as X and the Blasters; they all drew from 1950s rock & roll and country. Yoakam’s stripped-down, straightforward revivalism appeared radical in contrast to the polished music coming out of Nashville. The cowpunks, as they were dubbed, who came to Yoakam’s concerts were a huge help to his nascent career.
In 1984, Yoakam produced an independent EP called A Town South of Bakersfield, which got a lot of exposure on college and alternative radio stations in Los Angeles. He also got a record deal with Reprise Records because to the EP. Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc., Etc. It was acclaimed by rock and country reviewers, and it received broadcast on college radio stations throughout the United States. More significantly, it was a country success, with its first song, a version of Johnny Horton’s “Honky Tonk Man,” reaching number three in the spring and “Guitars, Cadillacs” reaching number four in the summer. The album became platinum in the end.
Hillbilly Deluxe, Dwight’s follow-up album from 1987, was a smash hit, with four Top Ten singles: “Little Sister,” “Little Ways,” “Please, Please Baby,” and “Always Late with Your Kisses.” With “Streets of Bakersfield,” a version of a Buck Owens song recorded with Owens himself, Yoakam scored his first number one hit in 1988. It was the first single from his third album, Buenos Noches from a Lonely Room, and it was another Top Ten success for him. The album’s second single, “I Sang Dixie,” hit number one, while “I Got You” reached number five. Just Lookin’ for a Hit, a compilation album Yoakam published in 1989, earned gold. In the autumn of 1989, the collection’s “Long White Cadillac” stalled at number 35.
Despite the fact that his 1990 album If There Was a Way didn’t have as many Top Ten singles as his first, it was a huge success; it was his first album to reach platinum since his debut. This Time, which was released in the spring of 1993, was even larger, with three number two singles — “Ain’t That Lonely Yet,” “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere,” and “Fast as You” — and a platinum certification. Yoakam was quiet for two years after the album’s release, returning in the summer of 1995 with Dwight Live, which failed to chart. He released his sixth album, Gone, in the autumn of that year, and it went gold by the spring of 1996, despite the fact that it didn’t generate any big country singles. Yoakam returned in 1998 with the all-new A Long Way Home, after 1997’s Under the Covers, a compilation of cover songs. Last Chance for a Thousand Years: Greatest Hits from the 1990s was released in 1999, and its freshly recorded version of Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” became Yoakam’s greatest success in six years, even reaching the lower reaches of the mainstream charts due to exposure in a khakis ad. In 2000, Yoakam released two albums: dwightyoakamacoustic.net, a stripped-down, all-acoustic revisiting of his past catalog, and Tomorrow’s Sounds Today, which included additional collaborations with Buck Owens and a version of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me.”
Yoakam debuted as a writer and director in 2001, and accompanied the film with the music South of Heaven, West of Hell. Two years later, he released Population Me on a different label (Audium), while Reprise released the collection In Others’ Words to compete with it. Dwight’s Used Records, a 14-track anthology of duets from other artists’ albums, unreleased covers, and songs Yoakam provided to tribute collections, was published in 2004. Blame the Vain, a self-produced album of entirely new songs, was released in 2005, together with the live CD Live from Austin, TX. In 2007, Dwight Sings Buck, an album of Buck Owens covers, was released. 3 Pears, Yoakam’s first album since returning to Warner Bros. Records after a trio of releases for New West Records, and his first album of original material since 2005’s Blame the Vain, featured two Beck productions, “A Heart Like Mine” and “Missing Heart,” which were recorded at Beck’s home studio in California. 3 Pears debuted at number 18 on the Billboard 200, which was his best chart position to date. Yoakam returned three years later with Second Hand Heart. Swimmin’ Pools, Movie Stars…, Yoakam’s first bluegrass album, released in 2016, included high lonesome reworkings of some of his best-known songs.
Dwight Yoakam is an American country music singer-songwriter. He has released 11 studio albums, 2 live albums, and 1 compilation album. Reference: dwight yoakam daughter.
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