With his cello-resonant voice, sincere delivery and rural-inflected lyrics, Randy Travis became the overarching figure in the New Traditionalists movement of the mid-1980s. While he found his greatest commercial success in that era, by bringing the sounds of traditional country music back to radio and television, his indelible influence has been felt in all the decades that followed.
Randy Bruce Traywick was born May 4, 1959 in Marshville, North Carolina. Although he began singing publicly before he reached his teens — often with his brother Ricky — Travis soon evolved into an incorrigible youth who routinely skipped school, drank to excess and clashed with the law over various offenses, including auto theft and burglary.