Ronnie Milsap › Similar Artists

Earl Thomas Conley - 100% match to Ronnie Milsap

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

John Conlee - 82% match to Ronnie Milsap

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

Johnny Lee - 82% match to Ronnie Milsap

Keith Whitley - 72% match to Ronnie Milsap

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

T.G. Sheppard - 72% match to Ronnie Milsap

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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Eddie Rabbitt - 69% match to Ronnie Milsap

Edward Thomas Rabbitt, 27 November 1941, Brooklyn, New York City, USA, d. 7 May 1998, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Rabbitt, whose name is Gaelic, was raised in East Orange, New Jersey. His father, Thomas Rabbitt, a refrigeration engineer, played fiddle and accordion and is featured alongside his son on the 1978 track ‘Song Of Ireland’. On a scouting holiday, Rabbitt Read more

Charley Pride - 67% match to Ronnie Milsap

18 March 1938, Sledge, Mississippi, USA. Charley Pride was born on a cotton farm, which, as a result of his success, he was later able to purchase. Pride says, ‘My dad named me Charl Frank Pride, but I was born in the country and the midwife wrote it down as Charley’. Harold Dorman, who wrote and recorded ‘Mountain of Love’, also hails from Sledge and wro Read more

Ricky Van Shelton - 64% match to Ronnie Milsap

12 January 1952, Danville, near Lynchburg, Virginia, USA. Shelton was raised in a church-going family and he learned to love gospel music. His brother worked as a musician and through travelling with him, he also acquired a taste for country music. He worked as a pipe fitter but his fiancée Bettye realized his singing potential, and in 1984, suggested that they went t Read more

Mickey Gilley - 62% match to Ronnie Milsap

9 March 1936, Natchez, Louisiana, USA, but raised in Ferriday, Louisiana. Gilley is a cousin to Jerry Lee Lewis and the evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. He grew up with his cousins and his mother, a waitress, who saved her money to buy him a piano when he was 12 years old. Gilley left Louisiana when he was 17 and started working in bars in Houston. His first record was ‘Tell Read more

Barbara Mandrell - 60% match to Ronnie Milsap

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

Dan Seals - 59% match to Ronnie Milsap

8 February 1948, McCamey, Texas, USA. Leaving successful pop duo England Dan And John Ford Coley was, at first, a disastrous career move for Dan Seals. His management left him with unpaid tax bills and mounting debts and he lost his house, his van, and his money. He says, ‘I was bankrupt, separated and living at friends’ places. My kids were with friends. It was a Read more

Steve Wariner - 58% match to Ronnie Milsap

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

Eddy Raven - 57% match to Ronnie Milsap

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

The Oak Ridge Boys - 55% match to Ronnie Milsap

Originally called the Country Cut-Ups, the Oak Ridge Boys were formed in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. They often performed at the atomic energy plant in Oak Ridge, where, in the midst of a war, their optimistic gospel songs were welcomed, and hence they were renamed the Oak Ridge Quartet. They recorded their first records in 1947 with a line-up featuring leader Wally Fowl Read more

Mel McDaniel - 54% match to Ronnie Milsap

6 September 1942, Checotah, Oklahoma, USA. McDaniel began working in bands around Tulsa - first on trumpet, then on guitar - and J.J. Cale wrote and produced his first single, ‘Lazy Me’. He moved to Nashville in 1969, and after two years of knocking on doors, his brother found him steady work at a club in Anchorage, Alaska. In the mid-70s, he began recording demos Read more