Three Years Later His First Major Label Single Was In The Country Top 3
Sammy Kershaw had been playing music since he was 12 and by 1988 drugs and alcohol and years of club work had worn him down so badly that he quit music and took a full time job remodeling Walmart stores
Sometimes the voice that finally breaks through is not the voice of a young dream beginning but the voice of a man who had already quit once and still had one song left strong enough to pull him back
Raised in Kaplan Louisiana he began performing as a child and was opening shows for established country acts while still a teenager
But nearly two decades of bars and road work and unstable income took their toll and Kershaw later described years marked by failed marriages and drugs and alcohol while supporting himself through jobs ranging from carpentry and welding to radio work
By 1988 he was finished and trying to save his marriage and get his life under control Kershaw quit drinking and quit drugs and quit the music business with them
He took a full time job supervising store remodeling for Walmart and in another interview he remembered simply being tired of the business and deciding that chasing the dream was no longer practical
Barry Jackson Pushed Him Toward One More Demo
For a while country music became the thing he used to do and then songwriter Barry Jackson persuaded him to make another demo
That tape helped bring Kershaw to Mercury Records which heard in his voice the traditional Louisiana country sound that immediately drew comparisons to George Jones
Mercury signed him and in 1991 released Cadillac Style and the single climbed to No. 3 on the country chart of Billboard
His debut album Donβt Go Near the Water followed and eventually went platinum
Two years later Kershaw scored his first No. 1 with She Donβt Know Sheβs Beautiful and by then the man who had once decided music could no longer support a real life had become one of the recognizable traditional voices of the country boom of the 1990s
The Walmart Years Made The Breakthrough Feel Different
The strangest part was how little time separated those two lives
In the late 1980s Sammy Kershaw was remodeling stores because he believed the sensible part of his music career was over
By the middle of the next decade he had gone from that Walmart job to platinum records without changing the country voice inspired by George Jones that Nashville had ignored for years
Nashville had ignored that voice for years and then it sold platinum
He did not come back polished clean and he came back with the road still in him and the success arrived after surrender rather than as a simple reward for ambition