Garth Brooks

About Garth Brooks

With his trademark black Stetson, country music star Garth Brooks was one of the best selling artists of the 90's and remains a Nashville king today. Garth Brooks was one of the most successful artists to integrate pop styles into traditional country music and he is often single-handedly credited with broadening the market for country music. After showing up seemingly out of nowhere in 1989, Brooks has gone on to sell over 115 million albums in the US alone and shatter concert attendance records for a country music act. Garth Brooks was born in Yukon, Oklahoma and his mother, Colleen Carroll was a local country music singer. Garth often sang with the family but his interest was focused more on sports than music and graduated from Oklahoma State with a degree in, of all things, advertising. But, after working as a club bouncer, Brooks inevitably made his way to Nashville where he scored a record deal and touring contract and also met another aspiring country singer Trisha Yearwood. His debut, the self-titled Garth Brooks, was a critical and commercial success. It went to #2 on the country charts and was solidly grounded in sparely produced, traditional country styles while still showcasing Garth's accomplished guitar playing and sly sense of humor. His singles "If Tomorrow Never Comes" and "The Dance" earned him his first two #1's. 1990's No Fences featured his signature honkytonk tune "Friends In Low Places" as well as his good-natured "Two Of A Kind, Working On A Full House." Garth Brooks retired unexpectedly in 2001 but returned in 2005 with a cover of John Fogerty's "Who Will Stop the Rain?" at the "Shelter From the Storm" benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Katrina.