Name | Dwight Yoakam | |
---|---|
Background | solo_singer |
Birth name | Dwight David Yoakam | |
Born | October 23, 1956Betsy Layne, Kentucky,United States | |
Origin | Columbus, Ohio, United States | |
Instrument | Guitar, vocals | |
Genre | Country Rockabilly | |
Occupation | Singer-songwriter, actor, director | |
Years active | 1984–present | |
Label | Reprise, Audium, New West | |
Associated acts | Buck Owens | |
Website | http://www.dwightyoakam.com/ | }} |
He was raised in Columbus, Ohio, but his family would return to Kentucky on weekends, thereby maintaining a sense of "home." Yoakam graduated from Columbus' Northland High School in 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 entertained his friends and classmates with his impersonations, including one of Richard Nixon.
Yoakam briefly attended Ohio State University, but dropped out and moved to Nashville in the late 1970s with the intent of becoming a recording artist. Eventually he headed West to California.
After Yoakam moved to Los Angeles, he worked towards bringing his particular brand of new Honky Tonk or "Hillbilly" music (as he himself called it) forward into the 1980s.
Writing all his own songs, and continuing to perform mostly outside traditional country music channels, Yoakam did many shows in rock and punk rock clubs around Los Angeles, playing with roots rock or punk rock acts like The Blasters (Yoakam scored a small video hit with his version of their song "Long White Cadillac"), Los Lobos, and X. This helped him diversify his audience beyond the typical country music fans.
Yoakam's recording debut was on the compilation album A Town South of Bakersfield, which was a collection of "New Country" artists who were based in Los Angeles. 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 single, 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".
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 Meat Puppets, 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 2000, Yoakam released dwightyoakamacoustic.net, an album featuring solo acoustic versions of many of his hits. He then left his major label and started his own label.
His most recent album of new material 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 working on a new original album, expected in 2011. His duet with Michelle Branch, a song titled "Long Goodbye", was released as a free download on Branch's official website in early 2011.
In July 2011, Yoakam re-signed with Warner Bros. Nashville and announced plans to release a new album in early 2012. Yoakam will co-produce the new album with rock producer Joe Chiccarelli.
Yoakam also starred alongside Penélope Cruz and Salma Hayek in the movie Bandidas (2006).
In 2000, Yoakam co-wrote, starred in, produced and wrote the soundtrack for South of Heaven, West of Hell, also starring Vince Vaughn and Bridget Fonda.
Some of his songs are included in the film, Big Eden.
Johnny Cash once cited Yoakam as his favorite country singer. Chris Isaak said Yoakam "is about as good a songwriter that ever put a pen to paper. I think he is someone who years from now will still be remembered, like Hank Williams or Buck Owens." Time magazine dubbed Yoakam "A Renaissance Man" and Vanity Fair declared, "Yoakam strides the divide between rock's lust and country's lament."
+Film | ! Year | ! Title | ! Role | Notes |
1991 | Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Performer | ||
1992 | Red Rock West | Truck Driver | ||
1994 | Mac Brazel | TV Movie | ||
1995 | The Little Death | Bobby Lomax | ||
1996 | Don't Look Back | Skipper | TV movie | |
1996 | Sling Blade | Doyle Hargraves | ||
1997 | Painted Hero | Virgil Kidder | ||
1998 | The Newton Boys | Brentwood Glasscock | ||
1998 | When Trumpets Fade | Lieutenant Colonel George Rickman | TV movie | |
1999 | The Minus Man | Blair | ||
2001 | South of Heaven, West of Hell | Valentine Casey | Also director and writer | |
2002 | Raoul | |||
2003 | Hollywood Homicide | Leroy Wasley | ||
2004 | Three Way | Herbert Claremont/Clarkson | ||
2005 | Wedding Crashers | Mr. Kroeger | ||
2005 | The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada | Belmont | Western Heritage Award for Outstanding Theatrical Motion Picture | |
2006 | Bandidas | Tyler Jackson | ||
2006 | Doc Miles | |||
2008 | Two:Thirteen | Sandy | ||
2008 | Four Christmases | Pastor Phil | ||
2009 | Crank: High Voltage | Doc Miles | ||
2010 | Joseph | |||
2010 | The Last Rites of Ransom Pride | Reverend Early Pride | ||
2010 | Bloodworth | Boyd Bloodworth | ||
2013 | Jayne Mansfield's Car | TBA | pre-production | |
+Television | ! Year | ! Title | ! Role | Notes |
1986 | Hee Haw | Himself | 1 episode; performer | |
1991 | P.S. I Luv U | Harlan Justice | 1 episode | |
1993 | America Comes to Graceland | Himself | TV documentary | |
1993 | Rhythm & Jam | Himself | TV mini-series | |
1997 | The Bag Boy | 2 episodes | ||
1998 | King of the Hill | Lane Pratley | 1 episode | |
2002 | Dinner for Five | Himself | 1 episode | |
2002 | Peter Fonda: Fortunate Son | Narrator | TV documentary | |
2011 | Wilfred (U.S. TV series) | Bruce | 1 episode | |
Category:1956 births Category:American country singers Category:American country singer-songwriters Category:American film actors Category:American male singers Category:American libertarians Category:American members of the Churches of Christ Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Musicians from Kentucky Category:Living people Category:Ohio State University alumni Category:People from Columbus, Ohio Category:People from Pikeville, Kentucky Category:Reprise Records artists Category:New West Records artists
da:Dwight Yoakam de:Dwight Yoakam fr:Dwight Yoakam it:Dwight Yoakam ja:ドワイト・ヨアカム no:Dwight Yoakam pl:Dwight Yoakam pt:Dwight Yoakam sv:Dwight Yoakam tr:Dwight YoakamThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.