Career
In 1979, he was discovered in Reno, Nevada by Larry McFaden, the bandleader and bassist of Mel Tillis. After making some demo tapes, Greenwood was signed in 1981 by the Nashville division of the MCA label (who had recently absorbed the Paramount label), and McFaden became his manager.
The first single, "It Turns Me Inside Out", made it to a spot in the top 20 of the country charts. The song had been written for Kenny Rogers, but Rogers turned it down due to the sheer volume of songs he had been offered at the time. "Ring On Her Finger, Time on Her Hands" landed him in the country top 10. Each song was marketed heavily, particularly in the South Florida market by MCA Account Service Rep, Brad Fitzgerald, among others. Lee Greenwood did not write Inside Out. It was written by Jan Crutchfield.
He is best known for writing and recording the patriotic song "God Bless the USA" in the early 1980s. In 1995, he was featured with the song in the Warren Chaney docudrama, America: A Call to Greatness. "God Bless the USA" gained renewed popularity following the launch of Operation: Desert Storm in 1991, and again, ten years later, following the September 11, 2001 attacks; in fact, the song even re-entered the Top 20 of the country charts in late 2001. Since then, Greenwood has played at many public events and commemorations of the attacks.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman’s natural fitness for the career of mother: the alternatives are all too expensive.”
—Ann Oakley (b. 1944)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
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“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)