Songoftheday 2/28/24 - A farmer and a teacher a hooker and a preacher, ridin' on a midnight bus bound for Mexico...

 

 

"Three Wooden Crosses" - Randy Travis

from the album Rise & Shine (2002)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #31 (one week)

Weeks in the Top-40: 5

 

Today's song comes from country music veteran Randy Travis, who originally recorded under his birth name of Randy Traywick when he released his first music. Born in south central North Carolina, he first moved to Charlotte, where Randy met his manager and eventual wife Elizabeth Hatcher. Moving to Nashville and signing with the indie label Paula Records, Randy's single "She's My Woman" grazed the lower stretch of the Country Singles chart for a month, peaking at #91 in 1979.  From there Travis disappeared for six years before getting a deal with Warner Brothers under the possibly more palatable name Randy Travis. His first single on the label, the cheating treatise "On The Other Hand", was originally another minor hit on Billboard magazine's Country Singles chart at #67, but after the follow-up, "1982", climbed all the way into the top ten at #6, it was re-released, where it spent a week at #1 in 1986. Then came "Diggin' Up Bones", which followed "Other Hand" to #1 and landed Randy's first Grammy nomination for Best Male Country Vocal Performance, which went to 70s holdover Ronnie Milsap for his crossover single "Lost In The Fifties Tonight". Although the "countrypolitan" side of Nashville won that night, Randy's position as the stalwart of the neo-traditional movement in the genre was solidified with a fourth big hit with "No Place Like Home", spending a pair of weeks at #2. Travis' debut album, Storms Of Life, topped Billboard's Country Albums chart. While it stopped at #85 on the all-genre Billboard 200 sales tally, the record spent 100 weeks on the list and went on to move over three million copies. 

With his position as the biggest star in the new traditionalist movement in country, Travis' return in 1987 with his sophomore effort was huge. The lead single from Always & Forever, "Forever and Ever, Amen", was an event record, the first I truly remember in the genre. The song went to take three weeks on top of the Country Singles chart, and it was followed by three more #1's in "I Won't Need You Anymore", "Too Gone Too Long", and "I Told You So", each so different from each other yet equally great. The Always & Forever album, which also topped the Country Albums chart, scored Randy's first top-40 set on the Billboard 200 sales tally at #19, selling over five million copies. In 1988, the album was nominated as a whole for the Best Male Country Vocal Grammy, and won. Travis' next release, Old 8X10 that same year, also won that award in 1989, and spun off a trio of #1 country radio hits with "Honky Tonk Moon", "Deeper Than The Holler", and "Is It Still Over". Travis closed the decade with No Holdin' Back, which claimed his fourth consecutive #1 Country Album, accompanied by a pair of Country Singles #1's with his cover of the Brook Benton soul classic "It's Just A Matter Of Time" and "Hard Rock Bottom Of Your Heart". "It's Just A Matter..." was nominated for the Best Male Country Vocal Grammy in 1990, this time losing to Lyle Lovett for his Lyle Lovett & His Large Band release.

Randy's first album of the 1990's was a duet album, Heroes & Friends, which gave the singer his fifth (and so far last) #1 country albums placing. It was his first, though, to fail to land a #1 country single, with the sole solo cut, "Heroes & Friends", stopping at #3 in 1991. His collaboration with George Jones from the album, "A Few Ole Country Boys", was nominated for a Best Country Vocal Collaboration Grammy Award, as was Travis' track from the same album with blues master B.B. King on "Waiting On The Light To Change", with both losing to Chet Atkins and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits' "Poor Boy Blues" (probably splitting the vote). He returned to the top though on his next record High Lonesome, whose second single "Forever Together", co-written with fellow country star Alan Jackson, topped the radio list later that same year. As a testament to his incredible success, Travis released two separate volumes of Greatest Hits albums the same week in 1992, which each hit the top-20 on the Country Albums chart, and each produced a #1 country radio hit with "If I Didn't Have You" and "Look Heart, No Hands". 

The mid-1990's was a roller-coaster ride for Travis; his next studio album Wind In A Wire, a soundtrack to a television series that was his first record not produced by Kyle Lehning. The album stalled at #24 on the Country Albums chart, and #121 on the Billboard 200, while neither of its two singles even made the country radio top-40, with "Cowboy Boogie" stalling at #46. However his next release, This Is Me in 1994 which reunited Randy with Lehning, returned the singer to the top ten at #10 while landing four top ten radio hits including the #1 "Whisper My Name". Also from the set "Better Class Of Losers" was up for a Grammy for Best Country Male Vocal, which went home with Vince Gill for his classic "I Believe In You". Randy's next album, Full Circle, his last with Warner Brothers, had only a pair of moderate country hits with "Are We In Trouble Now" stopping at #24. 

 

Randy moved to DreamWorks Records, hiring Byron Gallimore and James Stroud to co-produce his first record with the company, You and You Alone. The lead single from the set, "Out Of My Bones", spent a week at #2 on the Country Singles chart, and was Travis' first to make Billboard's "pop" Hot 100 at #64. That was followed by "The Hole", which rose to #9 on the country list, while "bubbling under" the Hot 100 at #105.  The third release, however, did the best, as "Spirit Of A Boy, Wisdom Of A Man" not only spent a week as well at #2 on the Country Singles chart, lasting a week longer than "Out Of My Bones", and came so close to reaching the top-40 on the Hot 100, stopping at #42 in the beginning of 1999. The You and You Alone album became his ninth studio set to reach the top ten on Billboard's Country Albums chart at #7.

 

Later that year, Travis released a follow-up on DreamWorks, A Man Ain't Made A Stone, which placed four singles on the Country Singles chart, but even the biggest of them, the title track, stalled out at #16, and stopped at #82 on the Hot 100. After this, Randy exited the label. Not only did he change who he recorded for, but he re-directed the focus of his work. The new millennium saw Randy concentrate on gospel and religious music, albeit within the country genre. Joining up with the sacred music imprint Word Records to be distributed on Curb, he released his first album of the 2000s Inspirational Journey. The record went to #34 on Billboard's Country Albums chart, but missed the Billboard 200. The only single promoted to country radio, "Baptism", only popped on to the Country Songs airplay chart for a solitary week at #75. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Southern Gospel Album in 2002, losing to Bill and Gloria Gaither Present A Billy Graham Homecoming. 

That same year, Randy returned with this second set of Word, Rise & Shine, which perhaps wasn't as didactic as his initial gospel attempt. However that didn't mean he wouldn't lean on the parable, as he certainly did on the lead single "Three Wooden Crosses". Written by country music industry pros Doug Johnson and Kim Williams, the story-song starts out with the foursome mentioned in the title of this post (like it's the start of a "walk into a bar" joke). After an accident claims the life of three of them (hence the song title), the parable takes a turn to mourn those and what they left behind. The twist at the end is pretty predictable, but still packs a punch, with the message being there's always time to redeem oneself before the end. Now religion isn't a prerequisite of morality, but used in the right ways can lead that path, and the conclusion to the song is solemn without being too preachy. Of course Randy's deep velvet voice helps make the medicine go down smoother, and production from longtime collaborator Kyle Lehning is simple and reverent. In return the single became beloved by the country music audience especially in the time of the second gulf war, and it proved to be his biggest success as a lead artist on the Hot 100 as well...

"Three Wooden Crosses" became Randy's first song to reach the top-40 on Billboard's Hot 100 in June of 2003. The song scored Travis' sixteenth #1 hit on Billboard's Country Songs airplay chart as well, spending a hefty 34 weeks on the list. The Rise & Shine album, released in October of 2002, brought him back to the Billboard 200 at #73, peaked at #8 on the Country Albums chart, and topped the Christian Albums list for a week, going on to sell over a half-million copies. At the Grammy Awards in 2003, the album won for Best Southern/Bluegrass Gospel Album. A year later, "Three Wooden Crosses" was nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance (his seventh), losing to industry darling Vince Gill for "Next Big Thing". A second single from the record, the folksy "Pray For The Fish", placed at #48 on the Country Songs chart.

 

Randy returned later in 2003 with his next gospel set Worship & Faith, which again was a top ten success on the Country Albums chart at #9, and rose to #4 on the Christian Albums chart (and #90 on the Billboard 200), also selling a half-million copies. But I guess the reception of radio depended on the strength of the song, and with all covers of old gospel standards, it was pretty much shunned by genre radio. Still, the set won Travis a second Grammy for Southern Gospel Album. 

Dipping back into the traditional country pool with the religiously-nebulous Passing Through in 2004, country radio has pretty much aged him out, with two singles stalling in the 40s ("Four Walls" and "Angels") on the country songs chart. and being his final placings as a lead artist. (Well, the latter song is really cringy.)

Veering back to strictly relgious music, Travis released Glory Train in 2005, which scored another Southern Gospel Grammy Awards in 2007. After a Christmas set on Word, Randy returned to the Warner Brothers fold, where he began his major-label career in the 1980s. He put out a strictly secular set, Around The Bend, in 2008, which climbed to #14 on the Billboard 200 and #3 on the Country Albums chart, even without radio playing any cuts to any degree. The record surprisingly landed Randy his first and so far only Grammy nomination for Best Country Album, which went to another veteran of the genre, George Strait, for Troubadour. A cut from the set, "Dig Two Graves", was also up for Best Country Songs (given to songwriters), losing to Sugarland's "Stay". 

In 2009, American Idol winner Carrie Underwood would remake Randy's 1988 song "I Told You So", bringing in Travis for a "duet" version for the single, which will also bring him back to the series. 

Travis would release three more studio albums on Warner Brothers in the 2010's, mostly of cover song material. His most recent album for the Gaither religious music label, with his most recent release, Precious Memories, which was an older live recording from 2003, arriving in 2020. However, the repercussions of a stroke in 2013 has made him unable to record anything substantial since. But he can rest on his laurels of being one of the best and most influential acts in country music.

(6/10)

(click below to see the rest of the post)

Here's Randy performing an acoustic version for the CMT Network...

and lastly, duetting on the song with fellow deep-voiced country singer Josh Turner in 2006...

Up tomorrow: The currently delulu diva is pretty happy.