“THE THREE COUSINS WHO PICKED COTTON ON LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN BEFORE THEY EVER HAD A BAND NAME — THEN NAMED THEIR FIRST #1 ALBUM AFTER THOSE FIELDS Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry were raised on separate cotton farms on Lookout Mountain, Alabama. Long before fame found them, they were learning guitar, singing church harmonies, and building the sound that would one day become Alabama. Their first paid performance came at a high school talent contest, where they won by playing a Merle Haggard song. After that came seven hard summers at The Bowery in Myrtle Beach — six nights a week, playing mostly for tips, while surviving between gigs in a $56-a-month apartment in Anniston. When Teddy received his first RCA check in 1980 for $61,000, his wife asked what mattered most to him. His answer was simple: he bought back his grandfather’s cotton farm. Nine years later, Alabama recorded “High Cotton.” By then, they had built a run of twenty-one straight number-one hits, but they never stopped calling Fort Payne home. So did Alabama really escape Lookout Mountain — or did they carry it with them onto every stage Nashville once believed belonged only to solo stars?”
admin Introduction From the Cotton Fields to Country Kings: The Story of Alabama Long before they were icons of the country music industry, the members of the legendary band Alabama were…