Dwight Yoakam
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Dwight Yoakam 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. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All
Music Guide
Written by Stephen Thomas Erlewine