Alabama: Randy Owen (vocals); Jeff Cook (vocals, fiddle, guitar); Teddy Gentry (vocals, bass); Mark Herndon (drums, percussion).
Additional personnel: Don Cook (vocals); Brent Mason (6 & 12 string electric
guitars, acoustic guitar); Mark Casstevens (acoustic guitar); Larry Franklin (fiddle); John Barlow Jarvis (piano, Hammond B-3 organ); Steve Nathan (keyboards); Lonnie Wilson (drums, percussion).
Producers include: Don Cook, Harold Shedd, Larry McBride, Josh Leo, Alabama.
Engineers: Mike Bradley, Mark Capps, Rick Riccio.
Includes liner notes by Robert K. Oermann.
"How Do You Fall In Love" was nominated for a 1999 Grammy for Best Country Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.
In 1980, country bands that played their own instruments and wrote their own songs were almost unheard of. Enter Alabama. 58 million records later, they're still going strong, and this two-CD set collects every single one of their 41 (!) number one hits. The key to Alabama's success is their versatility--as FOR THE RECORD illustrates, they've recorded Southern rock raveups ("Tennessee River"), hard country ("Jukebox In My Mind"), slick pop ("Love In the First Degree") and love ballads ("Once Upon A Lifetime"), and all of them have hit number one.
Chalk it up to lead singer Randy Owen's distinctive, emotion-packed voice, the band's harmonies and their knack for choosing first-rate material. A quarter of this collection consists of Alabama's signature proud-to-be-from-Dixie anthems, like "Southern Star," "High Cotton" and "Born Country," but there's also a generous helping of their romantic numbers, like "Face to Face" and "Feels So Right." The band's flair for detailing the struggles of the everyday working Joe is illustrated in tracks like "40 Hour Week," "I'm In A Hurry" and "Roll On." And for fans who already have everything the band ever recorded, there are three new songs, including the outstanding ballad "How Do You Fall In Love."
It's been over 50 years since a trio of young cousins left Fort Payne, Alabama, to spend the summer playing in a Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, bar called The Bowery. It took Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry and Jeff Cook six long years of tip jars and word of mouth to earn the major label deal they'd been dreaming of, but then seemingly no time at all to change the face of country music.
ALABAMA is the band that changed everything. They reeled off 21 straight #1 singles, a record that will probably never be equaled in any genre. They brought youthful energy, sex appeal and a rocking edge that broadened country's audience and opened the door to self-contained bands from then on, and they undertook a journey that led, 73 million albums later, to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
"A lot of fans will start a conversation with, 'I don't want to bother you,'" says Jeff, "but what they don't understand is that everything that's happened to us, every one of those awards, happened because we've been accepted and supported by our fans."
Not long ago, Teddy was witness to a scene that shows that their legacy of song remains as fresh as it was when that streak in the '80s kicked it all off.
"I was in Nashville," he says, "walking by this club full of young people--I'm talking 18 or 20. The band started playing 'Dixieland Delight' and everybody in the place started singing and sang all the way through. I had to smile at the longevity of the songs. Maybe some of those kids didn't even know who ALABAMA was, but they knew the music, and so I think that's a tribute to the fact that we spent a career putting out good songs that stand the test of time."
With ALABAMA & Friends, all of us who agree get to celebrate that accomplishment and its legacy one more time.