Aaron Tippin

During the early 1990s surge of new traditionalist country, Aaron Tippin built his reputation on a blend of tough, boisterous honky-tonk numbers, heartfelt ballads, and patriotic anthems that celebrated the working man. Born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1958, he spent most of his youth on a family farm near Greer, South Carolina, where he began singing to pass the hours spent on chores. He first picked up the guitar at age ten, yet he also took up his father’s passion for aviation; the elder Tippin had flown before turning to farming. At fifteen Tippin earned his own pilot’s license and was flying professionally before he turned twenty. While training for a career as a commercial airline pilot, he watched the industry collapse and decided to return to music instead. He worked the local honky-tonk circuit, honed his songwriting, and supported himself with a string of blue-collar jobs. After his marriage ended, he moved to Nashville in 1986 with little to lose. There he secured a staff-songwriting post at the storied Acuff-Rose company, where Charley Pride, Mark Collie, and David Ball, among others, cut his material. A 1990 demo tape earned him a contract with RCA.

His first RCA album, You've Got to Stand for Something, appeared in 1991; the title track became a Top Ten hit amid the Persian Gulf War, and Tippin joined Bob Hope’s USO tour. The 1992 follow-up, Read Between the Lines, reached million-selling, Top Ten status and yielded three Top Ten singles: “I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way,” “My Blue Angel,” and his first number one, “There Ain't Nothing Wrong with the Radio.” The 1993 release The Call of the Wild showcased his taste for rowdy anthems such as “Honky Tonk Superman,” the Top Ten “Working Man's Ph.D.,” and the Top 20 title song. Lookin' Back at Myself in 1994 sold less well, yet 1995’s Tool Box restored him to the top of the singles chart with “That's as Close as I'll Get to Loving You.” That same year he remarried.

Subsequent singles failed to match that success, and Tippin’s relationship with RCA deteriorated until the label dropped him. He did not land another deal until 1998, when he signed with Disney’s Lyric Street Records subsidiary. He co-produced the resulting album, What This Country Needs, which arrived later that year and returned him to the Top Ten with “For You I Will.” The next project, People Like Us (2000), became his first album to reach the country Top Five, driven by the number one hit “Kiss This,” a song he co-wrote with his wife Thea. A December to Remember, a Christmas collection, followed in 2001, and Stars & Stripes appeared in 2002. The post-September 11 track “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly” crossed over, peaking at number two on the country chart and inside the pop Top 20. In 2009 he issued In Overdrive, an album devoted to trucking songs. After several quiet years, Tippin joined Sammy Kershaw and Joe Diffie for the 2013 All in the Same Boat tour; the trio released a matching album that May.