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Larry Gatlin
Keynote Fee : $10,000 Travels From: TX |
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- Celebrities & Causes
- Substance Abuse
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One Dream Per CustomerA colorful storyteller, Gatlin recounts his meteoric rise in the music industry, entertaining his audiences with humorous anecdotes about his encounters with countless celebrity friends. He also shares the insight he gained from his personal triumph over addiction. The laughter, coupled with a few songs along the way, leave the audience with a true picture of this legendary performer.
Speaker Information
Grammy Award-winning country and western singer/songwriter Larry Gatlin has been plying his trade since the age of 7, when he began singing with his brothers on a Sunday morning radio show in Abilene, Texas.
As a young man unsure of how to begin a full-time music career, he entered the University of Houston on a football scholarship and eventually entered law school. In 1971, when auditioning for the group The Imperials, Gatlin met Dottie West, who took an interest in his music career. West purchased a one-way plane ticket to Nashville for Gatlin, where he worked days as a janitor at the Nashville CBS-TV affiliate and filled his nights with songwriting. Gatlin's first album, 1974's The Pilgram, hit #1 the following year with the song "Broken Lady," garnering Gatlin a Grammy in 1976. He joined forces with his brothers and produced a #1 single in 1977 with "I Just Wish You Were Someone I Love" and again in 1979 with "All The Gold In California."
Gatlin began a seven-month Broadway run starring in the title role of the musical The Will Rogers Follies in 1993, followed by a starring role in the show's national road tour. That same year also found him spending part of four successive Christmas holidays entertaining military personnel via USO tours, treks that literally took him around the world with stops in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia and Japan. His trip to Haiti in 1994 made him the first American entertainer to travel for the USO to visit troops on that island.
In 1998, Gatlin released his first album for Spring Hill Music Group, a mix of aggressive country and acoustic gospel songs all penned by Gatlin and titled In My Life. He also released his autobiography, All The Gold In California, which included an in-depth account of his battle with substance abuse and the subsequent love that saved his life. Gatlin began accepting speaking engagements, particularly before groups of young people, on the subject of drug and alcohol use, a subject he lived for over a decade. He continues to share his story, and his warm, charismatic personality serves to inspire and uplift audiences acoss the country.