Skaggs, Ricky

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Ricky Skaggs

Singer, songwriter, instrumentalist, producer

No single artist has done more since 1980 to shape the course of country music than Ricky Skaggs, the dynamic tenor from Kentucky. Skaggs’s virtuoso musicianship and firm belief in the power of traditional mountain music brought Nashville’s slide into country-pop to a screeching halt, paving the way to stardom for a new wave of young traditionalists in a score of styles. Today Skaggs rests comfortably at the pinnacle of country stardom and is revered in some circles as the Savior of the es.

“Without the pioneering work of Ricky Skaggs, there probably wouldn’t be any new country or new traditionalist music,” wrote Andrew Vaughan in Who’s Who in New Country. “Before George Strait was popular, before Reba McEntire was a superstar, before The Judds captured hearts with their mountain harmonies, Skaggs was breaking through country music’s lowest ebb. The late seventies and early eighties had seen country go pop…. But Skaggs re-introduced the backwoods sound and with an impeccably tight band and clear, snappy bluegrass-influenced productions, his records and live shows came like a breath of fresh air through a stagnant Nashville smog.”

Skaggs was certainly the ideal candidate to rescue country from the brink of blandness. He was—and is—enormously talented and ambitious, with a youthful determination to make a name for himself without sacrificing his artistic ideals. “I’m as country as corn bread,” he told People magazine. “I don’t think I could go pop if I had a mouthful of firecrackers.”

Ricky Skaggs was playing professionally at a time when most youngsters are learning to read. He was born and raised in Lawrence County, Kentucky, the son of amateur country and gospel musicians. By the time Skaggs was three he was singing with his parents at social gatherings in his home county, and by the tender age of five he could play mandolin well enough to do it onstage. Remembering those years, Skaggs told The Big Book ofBluegrass: “Me and my mom would do a lot of duets, and my dad would sing baritone or bass, so we would have lead and tenor and bass, and it would sound real haunting and neat. We used to work a lot of churches, and we played in high schools and at pie suppers and theaters and stuff.”

Skaggs’s heroes in the music business were the Stanley Brothers—Ralph and Carter—who were prominent bluegrass musicians. While still in his early teens, Skaggs perfected his singing and picking until it mirrored Carter Stanley’s to an astonishing degree. He also learned to play other instruments, including the fiddle and guitar. The constant round of local engagements led to a friendship with another young would-be bluegrass musician, Keith Whitley. The two pickers formed their

For the Record…

Born July 18, 1954, in Cordell, Ky.; son of Hobert (a welder and musician) Skaggs; married second wife, Sharon (a singer), 1981; children: (first marriage) Mandy, Andrew, (second marriage) Molly Kate, Lucas.

Country and bluegrass singer, songwriter, guitarist, mandolin player, and fiddler, 1961—. Had professional debut at age seven on the Flatt & Scruggs television show in Tennessee; at age fifteen joined Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, playing mandolin and singing tenor vocals; joined the Country Gentlemen, 1972, and J. D. Crowe and the New South, 1974. With Wes Golding (guitar) and Terry Baucom (banjo), formed group Boone Creek, 1976; group disbanded, 1978. Singer, backup musician, and producer with Emmylou Harris and her Hot Band, 1978-79.

Solo artist, 1974—, recording albums with Rebel Records, Sugar Hill Records, Warner Brothers, Rounder Records, and Epic Records. Has had numerous top ten country hits, including “I Don’t Care” and “Crying My Heart Out Over You.”

Awards: Named top new male vocalist by Academy of Country Music and male vocalist oftheyearbyCountryMusic Association, both 1982; inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, 1982; band of the year award from Academy of Country Music, best bluegrass act from Music City News, and Star of Tomorrow Award from Academy of Country Music, all 1983.

Addresses: Record company —Epic Records, 51 West 52nd St., New York, NY 10019.

own trio (with Whitley’s brother on banjo) and were soon playing radio shows on WLKS in West Liberty, Kentucky.

One night Skaggs and Whitley traveled to West Virginia to hear Ralph Stanley give a concert. Stanley was late for the engagement, so the owner of the club asked the two to perform until Stanley arrived. Skaggs remembered: “So we got up and entertained the crowd, and they were liking it—and in walks Ralph Stanley, my hero. We were singing ‘Little Glass of Wine’ or something like that. He set his banjo case down on the barstool and I glanced over at him out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t really smiling, he was looking off somewhere like he was reminiscing, in a way. It turned out that he was. Afterward he said, ‘Boys, the first time I saw y’all it just brought back so many memories of me and Carter.’”

Stanley was so impressed with Skaggs and Whitley that he asked them to join his band, the Clinch Mountain Boys. Skaggs was fifteen at the time, so he had to restrict his work to holidays and summers, but he became a phenomenon nonetheless. Ralph Stanley recruited Skaggs initially because the youngster could play and sing so much like the late Carter Stanley, but as Skaggs learned the ropes of bluegrass musicianship, his own formidable talents began to surface. Skaggs played with the Clinch Mountain Boys for two years, from 1970 until 1972. “It was a good training ground,” he said, “and I learned a lot of things about feel and music—I learned what not to play…. Those were really great days.”

Unfortunately, the earnings for bluegrass musicians were meager, and in 1972 Skaggs “retired” and took a job as a boiler repairman for a Washington, D.C.-area power company. He hated the work, so he was only too glad to return to music as a member of the Country Gentlemen in 1973. In that bluegrass band he played fiddle and sang high tenor. By the time he quit the Country Gentlemen some two years later (around the time he turned twenty), Skaggs had a considerable reputation and was sought after by a number of groups. He cut a solo album for Rebel Records, That’s It, and then joined another band, J. D. Crowe and the New roups.

The New South was a progressive bluegrass band in which pickers were encouraged to experiment with any manner of jazz, rock, and country influences. If Skaggs needed any final polish on his talents—a debatable point—he found it in this eclectic group. After touring with the New South for a year, Skaggs formed his own group, Boone Creek. The band—which for a time included Vince Gill on bass—cut two albums before breaking up in 1978.

Skaggs had become friends with Emmylou Harris while he was still working with the Country Gentlemen and she was singing in bars in Washington, D.C. In 1978 Harris asked Skaggs to join her band and help her with her first album. Even though he was yearning to break through as a solo artist at the time, Skaggs offered his vocal and instrumental services to Harris and steered her toward the old-time sound that so suited her voice. Skaggs sang and played on several of Harris’s early albums, most notably the Grammy-winning Roses in the Snow.

The network of friendships Skaggs had forged finally proved to be the catalyst for his successful solo career. In 1980 he released an acoustic album, Sweet Temptation, that earned favorable reviews, and in 1982 he earned his first major label contract with Epic Records. Skaggs’s first album with Epic, Waitin’ for the Sun To Shine, was a breakthrough both for him and for blue-grass-influenced country music in general. The album yielded two number-one hits, “Crying My Heart Out Over You” and “I Don’t Care,” and on its strength, Skaggs was named best male vocalist of 1982 by the Country Music Association.

Skaggs’s success was accomplished without stylistic compromise. His albums featured acoustic instruments and tight bluegrass harmonies, and he recorded such bluegrass classics as “Children Go Where I Send Thee” and “Uncle Pen.” In his book Country Music U.S.A., Bill C. Malone analyzed the many reasons for Skaggs’s popularity. “Skaggs is blessed with the clearest and most expressive tenor voice that has been heard in country music since Ira Louvin, and his instrumental virtuosity is breathtaking,” Malone observed. “Skaggs has been hailed as a traditionalist, and he still refers to his music as ‘bluegrass’ and openly speaks of building a repertory that will appeal to hard-core country fans…. But, of course, he is not purely a traditionalist, even though he does traditional material beautifully. His music is informed by the wide range of music that he and other young people have heard and played in today’s world—and by the experiences of living in a society vastly different from that of their parents.”

Instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, performer, and producer—Skaggs has filled all of these shoes for himself and other Nashville superstars. The extent of his success is doubly amazing in view of his age—he was born in 1954. The 1990s are likely to see further accomplishments from the affable Skaggs, who spends some 125 days a year touring in his custom-designed bus. In Stereo Review, Alanna Nash called Skaggs’s resuscitation of the old-time style “a noble and striking effort, a tour de force of indomitable American musical spirit.”

Ricky Skaggs was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1982, the youngest performer ever to become a regular on the Opry.

Selected discography

Solo LPs

That’s It, Rebel.

Sweet Temptation, Sugar Hill, 1980.

Waitin’ for the Sun To Shine, Epic, 1982.

Highways and Heartaches, Epic, 1982.

Don’t Cheat in Our Hometown, Epic, 1983.

Country Boy, Epic, 1984.

Ricky Skaggs Live in London, Epic, 1985.

Love’s Gonna Get Ya, Epic, 1986.

Comin’ Home To Stay, Epic, 1988.

Kentucky Thunder, Epic, 1990.

Family and Friends, Rounder.

Ricky Skaggs’s Favorite Country Songs, Epic.

With Boone Creek

Boone Creek, Rounder.

One Way Track, Sugar Hill.

Other

(With Tony Rice) Skaggs and Rice, Sugar Hill.

Has also appeared as featured guest performer on recordings by other artists, including Boone Creek’s Boone Creek and One Way Track; J. D. Crowe and the New South’s The New South; and Emmylou Harris’s Pieces of the Sky, Blue Kentucky Girl, and Roses in the Snow.