While many modern country stars like to think of themselves as cowboys, only Chris LeDoux (Born on October 2, 1948 in Biloxi, Mississippi) can lay claim to being the real McCoy. Amazingly adept at bringing the rodeo life into vivid color,he's not just blowing smoke. The singer is a world champion rodeo star, and since the early eighties has run his own 500 acre ranch in Wyoming. His family settled in Texas after his father retired from the Air Force. Chris began his musical odyssey at 14 when he started playing guitar and writing songs. He was also heavily involved with youth rodeo, and his songs reflected his love of the sport. After the family relocated to Wyoming, LeDoux began to actively pursue a rodeo career. He had twice won the State's bareback title while still attending high school in Cheyenne. After graduation he won a rodeo scholarship and received a national title in his third year. Chris started singing his songs to fellow rodeo contestants, and they reacted favorably to early works such as Bareback Jack, Rodeo Life, and Hometown Cowboy. Shortly after getting married in 1972, LeDoux made his first independent recordings in Sheridan, Wyoming, resulting in Rodeo Songs Old and New and Songs of Rodeo and Country (on cassette). He made his first Nashville recordings after his parents moved to Tennessee, and over the next few years recorded 15 albums in Nashville for his own American Cowboy label. In those days, LeDoux supposedly regarded the music as just a sideline to being a cowboy. But he apparently took the music seriously enough to sell 14 million dollars' worth of cassettes, most of them manufactured by his parents in their own home tape-duplicating room. By 1976, Chris was becoming known as a singer-songwriter of note and his rodeo career was riding high. He won the Bareback Bronc World Title, and also picked up awards in Wyoming and Nevada for his bronze sculptures of a bull rider and bronc rider. Something of cult figure, LeDoux continued to rodeo until 1984, when accumulated injuries made him hang up his spurs. Once he had his Wyoming Ranch operational, he began working on his musical career. He was now booking himself and his Saddle Boogie Band. Finally, his recording career bolted out of the chute when a mention from Garth Brooks, who sang about listening to a worn-out tape of Chris LeDoux in his 1989 hit Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old) was enough to kick up new interest in Wyoming's singing cowboy. In early 1991, Chris LeDoux was signed to Capitol Records. With his recordings released on Liberty, his first album, Western Underground, co-produced by Jimmy Bowen and Jerry Crutchfield, sold in excess of 100,000 units and included a minor country hit in This Cowboy's Hat (1991). Impressed by these sales, Capitol took over all of the singer's entire 22 independent cassettes, and re-released them on CD during 1991 and 1992. Chris teamed up with Garth Brooks for the title song of his 1992 album Whatcha Gonna Do With A Cowboy, and saw the single race up the country charts with the album attaining gold status. Another single, Cadillac Ranch(1992), went Top 20 and the cowboy singer co-starred with Suzy Bogguss in a TNN special, Ropin' and Rockin' in early 1993. LeDoux describes his music as a combination of western soul, sagebrush blues, cowboy folk, and rodeo rock n' roll; and captures a piece of modern day Americana in his songs. An 18-year overnight sensation, he is now playing to packed audiences and attracting younger fans with his Western Underground Band.
