{"id":37676,"date":"2014-10-18T09:00:48","date_gmt":"2014-10-18T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whisnews21.com\/?p=37676"},"modified":"2014-10-18T09:00:48","modified_gmt":"2014-10-18T14:00:48","slug":"kentucky-headhunters-25-years-pickin-on-nashville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/2014\/10\/18\/kentucky-headhunters-25-years-pickin-on-nashville\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky Headhunters 25 Years Pickin’ On Nashville"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KentuckyHeadhunters01\"Kentucky Headhunters Celebrate 25 Years of Pickin’ On Nashville<\/strong><\/h3>\n

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (October 17, 2014) \u2013 It was the album that Nashville \u2013 or the music industry as a whole \u2013 didn’t quite know what to do with. But, the fans quickly figured it out. On October 17, 1989 \u2013 twenty-five years ago today – Mercury Records released the albumPickin’ On Nashville, <\/em>the debut disc from The Kentucky Headhunters.<\/p>\n

\"Kentucky
Kentucky Headhunters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The band originated in 1968 and was comprised of Richard and Fred Young, along with cousins Greg Martin and Anthony Kenney. They didn\u2019t look or sound like any other groups in the business, they were more comfortable in t-shirts and jeans than your typical stage attire \u2013 and their sound was a hybrid of Country, Southern Rock, and Blues.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Edmonton, KY on a family farm, the band had played together for over twenty years prior to their big break. That time period included a couple of brushes with the spotlight. Under the name Itchy Brother (Richard Young recalls the name came from a scraggly lion from the cartoon Bongo<\/em> Congo), <\/em>the group were groomed by Capricorn Records in the 1970s, and almost signed with Led Zeppelin\u2019s Swan Song Records in the early 1980s. However, the third crack at the big time proved to be the charm.<\/p>\n

With a lineup that now included bass player and vocalist Doug Phelps, and his brother, Ricky Lee, the die was firmly cast for stardom. Having created a buzz with their live appearances in the Southern Kentucky area, as well as \u201cThe Chitlin\u2019 Show,\u201d their popular radio show at WLOC in Munfordville, by 1988, the Headhunters were ready to take their sound nationwide. Encouraged by their fans and friends like Tom Long, Larry Shell, and manager (and former Swan Song exec) Mitchell Fox, the boys agreed to roll the dice and take their music to Nashville.<\/p>\n

Richard Young remembers their showcase in Nashville. “As soon as I hit those first chords of \u2018Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine,\u2019 it looked like someone yelled “\u2019There\u2019s a bomb in here!\u2019 With the exception of the bartender, waitress and a few friends, we cleared Douglas Corner. One man was left standing, Harold Shedd, then president of Mercury Records. He came up, took one of our homemade albums and left. The next day he called and said, \u2018Boys, we may be cooking hamburgers next year, but I gotta try this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shedd\u2019s gamble proved to be right on the money. \u201cWalk Softly On This Heart Of Mine,\u201d the Bill Monroe classic was released as the first single, hitting the Billboard Country Singles chart on September 30, 1989. Radio didn\u2019t know what hit them, as the group watched the single move up the charts. \u00a0Though the single only made it to No. 25 on the charts, Stan Hitchcock at CMT was paying attention, and the video spread the music of the Kentucky Headhunters around the nation like wildfire.<\/p>\n

\"Kentucky
Kentucky Headhunters Celebrate 25 Years of Pickin’ On Nashville<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pickin\u2019 On Nashville <\/em>included three more singles, \u201cDumas Walker,\u201d \u201cRock and Roll Angel,\u201d and their top-ten cover of Don Gibson\u2019s \u201cOh Lonesome Me.\u201d When the dust settled, the disc sold well over two million copies, and was named as the 1990 Album of the Year by the Country Music Association \u2013 not bad, when considering the group recorded the album in three days for only $4500 \u2013 an unheard of amount of time and money then and now. The success of the album also led to back-to-back wins for Vocal Group of the Year from the CMA in 1990 and 1991. They also won the Academy of Country Music trophy for Vocal Group of the Year, an American Music Award, and the most coveted award in all of music \u2013 a Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for the album. Their fan base would also include some of the biggest artists of all time, such as ZZ Top. Young recalls a conversation he once had with the architects of Rock & Roll, Carl Perkins. \u00a0\u201cYou know Carl, I was beginning to think we would never get an album out,\u201d he told the man behind \u201cBlue Suede Shoes.\u201d\u00a0 To which Perkins replied, “Yeah buddy, but when ya’ll came out, you came out sideways!\u201d Truer words were never spoken.<\/p>\n

All of these years later, the success keeps coming for the Kentucky Headhunters. Never one to be pigeon-holed in any one specific genre, the group continues to tour and record to this day. All in all, they have released thirteen albums, including their self-titled disc this year. They also continue to play to packed houses both here in the United States and abroad.<\/p>\n

To celebrate the 25th\u00a0anniversary of Pickin\u2019 On Nashville, <\/em>the Headhunters will be featured in a special article on Billboard.com<\/a>\u00a0this weekend where The 615\u2019s Chuck Dauphin ventured from Nashville to the group\u2019s \u201cPractice House\u201d in the Edmonton, KY to recall the impact that the record made \u2013 and continues to make. Also, the Kentucky Headhunters will be featured in special programming on SiriusXM this weekend, sharing their reflections and memories of the music. Richard Young sums up his feelings on the group\u2019s success, saying simply \u201cWe are lucky boys, who have lived a charmed life.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Webster Associates, LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kentucky Headhunters Celebrate 25 Years of Pickin’ On Nashville NASHVILLE, Tenn. (October 17, 2014) \u2013 It was the album that Nashville \u2013 or the music industry as a whole \u2013 didn’t quite know what to do with. But, the fans quickly figured it out. On October 17, 1989 \u2013 twenty-five years ago today – Mercury Records released the albumPickin’ On Nashville, the debut disc from The Kentucky Headhunters. The band originated in 1968 and was comprised of Richard and Fred Young, along with cousins Greg Martin and Anthony Kenney. They<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37678,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whisnews21.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}