Neal McCoy

Neal McCoy carved out a string of mid-'90s successes by championing a neo-traditionalist honky tonk sound. Born Hubert Neal McGaughey, Jr. in Jacksonville, Texas, to an Irish-descended father and a Filipino mother, he absorbed an eclectic mix of country, swing, rock, disco, and R&B during childhood before beginning to sing in local gospel choirs. His voice matured into a rich baritone that he first employed professionally with an R&B band, although he soon circled back to country and began working the bar-and-club circuit across Texas. In 1981 a talent contest brought him to the attention of Janie Fricke, who secured him a six-year stint as Charley Pride's opening act. He stepped away from that role in 1988 to launch his own recording career, issuing the debut single "That's How Much I Love You" under the spelling Neal McGoy, the phonetic rendering of his birth name. After adopting the more familiar McCoy spelling, he released his first album, At This Moment, on Atlantic in 1990. Despite an expanding reputation for high-energy, freewheeling live performances, neither that album nor its 1992 successor, Where Forever Begins, achieved significant sales.

McCoy's breakthrough arrived with the 1994 release No Doubt About It. Its title track and "Wink" both reached number one on the country chart while "The City Put the Country Back in Me" climbed to the top five, driving the project past the platinum threshold. The momentum carried into 1995 with the platinum-certified You Gotta Love That, which yielded three number-three singles: "For a Change," "They're Playin' Our Song," and the title track. The self-titled Neal McCoy followed in 1996, securing a third consecutive platinum album and another top-five entry in "Then You Can Say Goodbye." A Greatest Hits package appeared in 1997, followed later that year by Be Good at It, which featured the top-five smash "The Shake" yet became his first project since the breakthrough to fall short of platinum. The Life of the Party arrived in 1999 as a collection of ballads and soft country-pop numbers, and both that album and 2000's 24-7-365 reflected a continued decline in sales. After a period away from the studio, McCoy resurfaced in early 2003 with The Luckiest Man in the World and followed it with That's Life in 2005. In 2011 he issued Music of Your Life, a fusion of big-band jazz and country recorded with Les Brown, Jr. for a public-television special. The studio album XII appeared the next year, and McCoy returned in 2013 with Pride, a tribute to his longtime hero Charley Pride. Three years later he explored the Great American Songbook on the Steve Tyrell-produced set You Don't Know Me.