Retro Redux: Alabama's Randy Owen Is Only Human

Holy Cow. Randy Owen, the lead singer of country group Alabama, has turned into a geezer! I happened to be scanning with the TV remote last night — a common occurrence, I'm forced to admit — and spotted him singing solo in what appeared to be a recent appearance. He'll turn 58 this year and pretty much looked it, but speaking on behalf of geezers everywhere I'd just like to say that we're all getting older, folks. It's only human.

Country music is a genre that's always interested me, and it's a variety of music that --  like many others — has undergone lots of changes through the years. I guess it probably originated as a combination of immigrant folk music and tunes handed down by early Americans, which would have included everybody from hillbillies to cowboys. It has evolved in a variety of ways, and has cycled through sounds from soft to hard and everything in between, and instrumentally from washboards and harmonicas to fully modern.

Alabama could certainly be classified as a transitional group. I've been a fan of theirs for a long time, and believe it or not they've been around for something like 30 years. And although they have roots in both rock and pop, they are most definitely considered a country band. In fact, they're one of the most popular country groups in history and during the 1980s their records outsold everyone. In doing that they broke new ground because country music bands have seldom been known as superstars in record sales. It was mostly the vocalists who became the mega-sellers.

Randy and his cousin Teddy Gentry grew up together on neighboring cotton farms in rural Alabama (the state, not the group), and were interested in music from a very young age. As they reached their teens, they began to play and sing in various groups — sometimes together, sometimes separately — and in the late 1960s joined up with another cousin, Jeff Cook, to form a trio they called Young Country.

Article Author: Big Geez

Big Geez is a retiree who takes time off from trimming his ear hair to write about music -- occasionally writing reviews, but most often using his regular music feature, Retro Redux, to share his opinions about how something resonates with his memories and those of his generation. …

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