Gretchen Wilson
A bartender from Pocahontas, Illinois, who had spent nearly twenty years singing in other people's bars released "Redneck Woman" in March 2004 and had country radio's first female number one in two years within two months. Gretchen Wilson's debut sold five million copies, and the mud-splattered video made her the face of a louder, prouder kind of country for a couple of summers.
Wilson was born in 1973 to a teenage mother; her father left when she was two, she dropped out of high school, and she worked as a cook. She had spent close to two decades singing and tending bar, first around Pocahontas and then at the Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar in Nashville's Printer's Alley, when she fell in with John Rich and Big Kenny Alphin. Their MuzikMafia collective ran Tuesday-night songwriting rounds at the Pub of Love, a tiny, dingy, standing-room-only room above 12th and Porter. "People were eventually slammed in there," she said.
Epic signed her in 2003. "Redneck Woman," which she wrote with Rich, came out on March 15, 2004, and was at number one on the country chart inside two months, where it stayed five weeks; it was the first number one for a solo woman since Martina McBride's "Blessed" in 2002, and it crossed to number 22 on the Hot 100. The David Hogan video had her fronting a bar band, driving a GM pickup and a four-wheeler through the mud, and sharing the frame with Kid Rock, Big & Rich, Tanya Tucker, and Hank Williams Jr., the last two name-checked in the lyric. Here for the Party was rushed out early, debuted at number one on the country albums chart and number two on the Billboard 200, and went five-times platinum; the title track and "When I Think About Cheatin'" both reached the top five, and the song won her the Grammy for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. That fall she rewrote it as "Redbird Fever" for the St. Louis Cardinals' World Series run.
All Jacked Up, in September 2005, topped the Billboard 200, and its title track entered the country chart at number 21, then the highest debut ever for a woman, but it peaked at number eight and the album sold a million rather than five. One of the Boys, in 2007, was out of the top 200 after ten weeks. A Heart devotee, she sang "Barracuda" with Alice in Chains and Nancy Wilson at the 2007 VH1 Rock Honors. Thirteen singles charted in all, and the one everyone still knows is the first.
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