Tough guy LeDoux was a true star

At the 1993 International Country Music Fan Fair in Nashville, I was interviewing rodeo and country music star Chris LeDoux in the media building at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds when a strange thing happened just above us on a mezzanine level.

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Fan Fair officials had constructed an upper-level area of "rooms" for TV and radio interviews out of heavy blue cloth and aluminum poles. All at once, something caused the poles to shift and all the framing went tumbling down.

Mr. LeDoux turned toward the sound with a startled look. After he saw no one was injured, he broke into a huge grin. That was characteristic of Mr. LeDoux, a musical hero of Garth Brooks.

I thought about Mr. LeDoux, 56, after learning that he had lost his battle with bile duct cancer March 9.

When the news spread, phrases such as "nice guy" and "great performer" repeatedly were said, but the one I liked the most was by a co-worker who remarked, "He was the real deal."

There is no doubt that Chris LeDoux was no drugstore cowboy poser. He was a tough guy - world-champion bareback bronc rider in 1976 - who wasn't ashamed to cry once in a while. He also was an amazing performer who went on stage with a high level of energy that Mr. Brooks admitted to copying.

Mr. LeDoux got a guitar when he was about 14, and it became his passion through his many years of competing in rodeos.

"There always was a guitar around when I was rodeoing throughout the '70s and early '80s," he said. "There always was a guitar in somebody's car. We'd bring it in a motel room with a six-pack of beer and pass it around. One guy would be playing the spoons. Somebody else would be playing a comb with a piece of wax paper on it.

"I'd just write songs about the lifestyles I saw and make an album every year. I was influenced by the lifestyles and experiences I had out on the road, but I suppose musically I probably was influenced by just about everybody I ever heard."

Before Liberty/Capitol Records signed him in 1990, he had recorded 22 independent albums; literally selling them from the back of his truck at rodeos and stage shows.

Songwriter Randy Taylor introduced Garth Brooks to Mr. LeDoux's music.

"Garth told me that Randy took select cuts off some of my albums and played them for him. He told Garth, 'If you write a rodeo song, make it about a saddle bronc rider, put Chris LeDoux's name in there, and it will be a hit.'"

Mr. Taylor and Mr. Brooks co-wrote Much Too Young, which became Mr. Brooks' debut single release in 1989. The song had the lines, "A worn-out tape of Chris LeDoux/Lonely women and bad booze/Seem to be the only friends I've left at all."

Mr. LeDoux continued, "It was Garth's first single. No one had heard of him. Then after that he exploded. I was just driving down the road in Wyoming with my wife and a couple of the kids listening to the radio, going to town to get groceries when the song came on the radio. I heard this guy mention something about a saddle getting colder and the broncs getting tougher, and I thought, 'Shoot, let me listen to this,' and I turned it up. Then he mentioned a worn out tape of Chris LeDoux, and I about wrecked."

DON RHODES HAS WRITTEN ABOUT COUNTRY MUSIC FOR 34 YEARS. HE CAN BE REACHED AT (706) 823-3214 OR AT DON.RHODES@MORRIS.COM.