Beaumont, TX · country

Clay Walker

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90s Texas neotraditionalist with a stack of chart-toppers and a honky-tonk tenor that hasn't aged.

Ernest Clayton Walker Jr. was born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1969 and raised mostly in nearby Vidor, the oldest of five children. His father gave him a guitar at nine, and he was entering talent competitions by fifteen. After graduating Vidor High School in 1986 he worked at a Goodyear plant while playing local clubs, eventually becoming house singer at a Beaumont bar called the Neon Armadillo, where producer James Stroud discovered him in 1992.

Walker's self-titled debut appeared on Giant Records in 1993, opening with the chart-toppers "What's It to You" and "Live Until I Die," both later joined by a third number one from the same album, "Dreaming with My Eyes Open." The record was certified platinum, the first of four consecutive platinum albums for Walker.

His style is rooted in honky-tonk and Texas dancehall traditions, with fiddle and steel guitar behind a clear, twangy tenor.

He stayed with Giant until its closure in 2001, then recorded for Warner Bros., RCA Nashville and Curb. Across eleven studio albums he has placed more than thirty singles on the country charts, six of them number ones, among them "If I Could Make a Living," "This Woman and This Man" and "Rumor Has It."

Walker was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in the late 1990s and has since been active in raising money and awareness for MS research.

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