Randy Travis Tab, Biography And Chords

Randy Travis was born with the name Randy Traywick in Marshville, N.C., on May 4, 1959. He grew up a hellraiser, by drinking, fighting, dabbling in drugs and committing petty crimes on a path heading straight toward prison. But the rebel ninth-grade dropout "found himself" in the spotlight of a Charlotte, N.C., nightclub, where he won a talent show. With the help and direction of the club's owner, Lib Hatcher, the teenager underwent a startling transformation. He purified his mind, turning his back on substance abuse and focusing on music. At the time, Nashville was deep in the Urban Cowboy, pop-country phase of the early 1980s. Travis was intent on bringing back fiddles, steel guitars and honky-tonk lyrics. He recorded for a tiny label, Paula Records, and, in classic country fashion, drove from radio station to radio station throughout the South to promote his work. After five years of paying dues in North Carolina, he and Hatcher (who had become his manager) moved to Music City in 1981 with little more than dreams and determination to sustain them. Back then, not a single executive on Music Row could hear the possibilities in Travis' subtly shaded backwoods baritone. He was turned down by every record label in town. Hatcher took a job managing a nightclub called The Nashville Palace.