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Singer, songwriter

Country musician Dwight Yoakam has been dubbed the "honky-tonk savior" and the "Hank Williams of the 1980s" for his successful and almost singlehanded revival of traditional country forms. Yoakam, a native of rural Kentucky, makes "the sort of country music you might have thought wasn't made anymore—the Real Thing, complete with sweetly morose fiddles, howled vocals and songs about drowning romantic sorrows in the nearest distilled liquid," to quote Philadelphia Inquirer critic Ken Tucker.

Not only has Yoakam reaped praise from fans of "real" country, he has attracted a new generation of listeners, including punk rockers in America's biggest cities. "Yoakam sings country music the way a union organizer might seek to stir up the rank-and-file," wrote Tucker. "He extolls the virtues of country music with every twanging moan, with every sharp whine of the steel guitar that courses through his songs. 'Bill Monroe with drums,' is Yoakam's curt description of his music, and though not literally true . . . [his] implications are ringingly clear: This is a 29-year-old who aims to revitalize the verities."

Yoakam was born in Pikesville, Kentucky, the grandson of a coal miner. Although his parents moved to Ohio while he was still young, he retained a strong affection for his Appalachian roots, one which offers the primary fuel for his music. "Being born in Kentucky and having my mother's family there has left its imprint," he told the Washington Post. "I feel blessed by my exposure to that hillbilly culture. It's a vanishing part of America and I'll always be proud of it. I feel I have to acknowledge it because it's given me the subject matter and form for my music. I never could sing rock 'n' roll. I have a country voice." Yoakam also has a long abiding affinity for country performers such as Johnny Cash, Williams, and Buck Owens, whose music of the 1950s and 1960s had a strong regional appeal.

When he began making his own music, Yoakam drew without hesitation on the work of the predecessors he admired. Ironically, when he tried to sell his sound in Nashville in the late 1970s, he was told that he was "too country" and was turned away without a contract. Taking a clue from role models like Owens and Emmylou Harris, Yoakam journeyed to the West Coast and began a lengthy stint of club and bar performances. He worked in near anonymity—and near poverty—for more than eight years before finally landing a contract with Reprise, an eclectic subsidiary of Warner Bros.

The Nashville producers who rejected Yoakam initially must have found his success with a wide country and rock audience disconcerting. Equally embarrassing was the fact that Yoakam did not take great pains to hide his disdain for the type of country music that was being promoted in the South. "There have been a few points in history when country music stopped being country music," Yoakam told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1986. "It happened in the '60s, when you got a lot of Nashville producers putting violins onto country records to make them appeal to the pop-music audience. It happened a few years ago, when all you heard from the country-music industry was the necessity to 'crossover,' to make country records that could be played on pop radio stations. Country music then became this homogenized, all-things-to-all-people music, and it was terrible. It's the worst thing that can happen to a colloquial, ethnic, traditional art form, because it means that it loses its uniqueness."

Yoakam has striven to rebuild that traditional art form, finding it still valid and exciting. He told Rolling Stone that he is not surprised by the reaction his music gets from punk, New Wave, and rock fans. "At first glance it would appear to be a great irony," he said. "But not far below the surface, it starts to hit home that this is from whence [rock] music came. . . . Everybody knows rhythm and blues was the black predecessor to rock & roll, but from the white side of things, hillbilly music—when it came down into the cities—was rock & roll. It was the ostracized form of music that attracted kids. . . . These kids have picked up on that, which is why I owe them a debt for opening doors to me and the band. They're part of the people who brought me to the dance. But all I have to do to satisfy that indebtedness is not bastardize my pure form of country music."

More recently Yoakam has become more diplomatic in his relations with Nashville, and the industry has responded in kind. Yoakam was named best new male vocalist by the Academy of Country Music in 1987, and although his duet with Buck Owens, "Streets of Bakers-field" was passed over for awards, it occasioned much positive critical comment. Yoakam is pleased to have helped revitalize Owens's career, which had fallen on hard times in the wake of a buffoon-like "Hee Haw" image. The two entertainers often travel and perform together, with Yoakam assuming the role of grateful apprentice. Tom Moon noted in the Philadelphia Inquirer, however, that Yoakam "is not an imitator. He's not Johnny Cash revisited. He's not reviving some lost art. Rather, he's reinventing the California honky-tonk sound, throwing together the elements of his background and re-combining them helter-skelter with an abandon usually exhibited by renegade avant-garde artists."

Whatever his methods, Yoakam is now finding the success he thought he might never achieve. According to Cameron Rändle in Rolling Stone, Yoakam's "refusal to abandon traditional [country] forms is being vindicated." The critic concluded: "If Yoakam's early showing is any indication, his future might warrant equal optimism. On vinyl, as in concert, it is often difficult to tell which breaks more poignantly—his heart or his voice. . . . Yoakam may possess what it takes to become the Hank Williams of the Eighties."

—Anne Janette Johnson