Ricky Van Shelton › Similar Artists

Earl Thomas Conley - 100% match to Ricky Van Shelton

17 October 1941, Portsmouth, Ohio, USA. The son of a railway worker, Conley left home at 14 when his father lost his job. His influences were the Grand Ole Opry, followed by Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, and then the Beatles. He originally planned to be a painter, but developed his love for country music while in the US Army. After his military service, Conley had a suc Read more

Johnny Lee - 88% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Janie Fricke - 86% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Jane Frickie, 19 December 1947, on the family farm near South Whitney, Indiana, USA. Fricke, who adopted the spelling in 1986 to avoid mispronunciation, has sung in public since the age of 10. Her father was a guitarist and her mother a piano teacher and organist. Fricke sang jingles to pay her university fees and then moved to Los Angeles to find work as a session singer. A Read more

Vern Gosdin - 83% match to Ricky Van Shelton

5 August 1934, Woodland, Alabama, USA. Gosdin’s first steps in carrying out his wish to be a country singer-songwriter came in the early 50s, when as a result of singing with his two brothers in the local church, they became regulars as the Gosdin Family on WVOK Birmingham. In 1953, he moved to Atlanta where he sold ice cream and in 1956 to Chicago where he ran a countr Read more

T.G. Sheppard - 77% match to Ricky Van Shelton

William Neal Browder, 20 July 1944, Humboldt, Tennessee, USA. Sheppard is a nephew of old-time country performer Rod Brasfield, and his mother was a piano teacher who gave him lessons. Sheppard began his professional musical career in Memphis in the early 60s, working as a backing vocalist for Travis Wammack and then performing as Brian Stacey, having a regional hit with
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Eddy Raven - 72% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Edward Garvin Futch, 19 August 1944, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. Futch, one of 11 children, was raised in bayou country. His father, a truck driver and blues guitarist, used to take him to honky tonks. He was given a guitar, and by the time he was 13 years old, he was playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band. When the family moved to Georgia in 1960, he worked for a radio st Read more

Ronnie Milsap - 72% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Ronnie Lee Millsaps, 16 January 1943, Robbinsville, North Carolina, USA. Milsap’s mother had already experienced a stillbirth and the prospect of raising a blind child made her mentally unstable. Milsap’s father took him to live with his grandparents and divorced his mother. What little vision young Ronnie had was lost after receiving a vicious punch from a schoolm Read more

John Conlee - 70% match to Ricky Van Shelton

11 August 1946, Versailles, Kentucky, USA. Conlee’s early years were filled with farm chores, but he was playing the guitar on local radio before he was 10. He describes Versailles as ‘a very small town with a very large barbershop chorus’ in which he sang high tenor. Like soul singer Solomon Burke, he became a licensed embalmer. In the mid-70s he set about es Read more

Steve Wariner - 68% match to Ricky Van Shelton

25 December 1954, Noblesville, Indiana, USA. Wariner played in his father’s country group from the age of 10. One night he had a residency at a club near Indianapolis and the starring attraction, Dottie West, went on stage to harmonize with him. He then played bass for West and after that, for Bob Luman. Luman recorded several of Wariner’s songs, while Wariner revi Read more

Charly McClain - 66% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Charlotte Denise McClain, 26 March 1956, Jackson, Tennessee, USA. McClain began her musical career when only nine years old with her brother in a band called Charlotte And The Volunteers. For six years they worked locally and also had television appearances. She then started modelling swimsuits, changed her name to Charly and was signed to Epic in 1976. She had US country hi Read more

Donna Fargo - 66% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Yvonne Vaughn, 10 November 1949, Mount Airy, North Carolina, USA. Fargo is the daughter of a tobacco farmer, and she sang in church as a child. She became a schoolteacher and was discovered by her future husband, record producer Stan Silver, singing in a club in Los Angeles. She first recorded in 1969, but her success started once she had signed with Dot Records in 1971. She Read more

Gene Watson - 66% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Gary Gene Watson, 11 October 1943, Palestine, Texas, USA. Raised in Paris, Texas, in a musical family, he first worked as a professional at the age of 13. In 1963, he moved to Houston, where he found daytime employment in car engine and bodywork repairs. During the evenings, his vocal style, with its slight nasal sound in the best country tradition, made him a very popular h Read more

Keith Whitley - 65% match to Ricky Van Shelton

1 July 1955, Sandy Hook, Kentucky, USA, d. 8 May 1989, Goodlettsville, Tennessee, USA. Whitley, who grew up in a musical family, learned to play the guitar from the age of six and was on the radio with Buddy Starcher in Charleston, West Virginia, aged eight. He joined Ralph Stanley And His Clinch Mountain Boys when he was 15, and both he and his friend Ricky Skaggs made thei Read more

Holly Dunn - 64% match to Ricky Van Shelton

Holly Suzette Dunn, 22 August 1957, San Antonio, Texas, USA. Dunn’s father was a preacher and her mother a professional artist, but they encouraged their children to sing and entertain. Dunn learned guitar and became a lead vocalist with the Freedom Folk Singers, representing Texas in the White House bicentennial celebrations. After university, she joined her brother, C Read more

Barbara Mandrell - 63% match to Ricky Van Shelton

25 December 1948, Houston, Texas, USA. Raised in Oceanside, near Los Angeles, California, Mandrell comes from a musical family: her father, Irby, sang and played guitar and her mother, Mary, played piano and taught music. At the age of 12, Mandrell demonstrated the steel guitar at a national convention and then worked in Las Vegas with Joe Maphis and Tex Ritter. By her teens Read more