Active since 1962, he won a Grammy Award and he has charted 33 singles on the Hot Country Songs with 7 singles reaching the number one. He has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.[4][5]
Greenwood was born in South Gate, California, a few miles south of Los Angeles. After his parents separated, he grew up in Sacramento, on the farm of his maternal grandparents.[10] At the age of seven, he started singing in church.
Greenwood did not serve in the United States military despite the universal draft at the time. He has said that he was given a 3A deferment for family hardship due to having children at age 17.[11] He eloped to Reno, Nevada, with his first wife, Edna Greenwood, in 1960.[12]
Greenwood founded his first band, The Apollos, in 1962.[2] The band, which changed its name later to Lee Greenwood Affair, played mostly pop music and appeared mostly in casinos in Las Vegas, Nevada.[2] In 1969, he joined the Chester Smith Band and had his first television appearance. A short time later, he worked with the country musician Del Reeves.[2] A few records were recorded in Los Angeles with the Paramount label. After the band broke up in the 1970s, Greenwood moved back to Las Vegas, where he worked as a blackjack dealer during the day and as a singer at night.[2]
In 1979, he was "discovered" in Reno, Nevada, by Larry McFaden, the bandleader and bassist for Mel Tillis. After making some demo tapes, Greenwood was signed in 1981 by the Nashvilledivision of the MCA label (which had recently absorbed the Paramount label), and McFaden became his manager.
The first single, the Jan Crutchfield-penned "It Turns Me Inside Out", made it to a spot in the top 20 of the country chart in 1981.[2] The song had been written for Kenny Rogers, Rogers recorded a version but decided to pass on it due to the sheer volume of songs he had been offered to record at the time. "Ring on Her Finger, Time on Her Hands" landed him in the country top 10. Each song was marketed heavily, particularly in the South Florida market by MCA Account Service Representative, Brad Fitzgerald, among others.
Greenwood is known for writing and recording "God Bless the U.S.A." in the early 1980s,[2] and later "God Bless You Canada". The song gained renewed popularity following the launch of Operation: Desert Storm in 1991,[13] and again, 10 years later, following the September 11 attacks. "God Bless the U.S.A." re-entered the top 20 of the country charts in late 2001. Since then, Greenwood has played across the US, at many public events and commemorations of the attacks.
On May 19, 2018, Lee Greenwood was awarded the MMP Music Award for his lifelong contribution to the music industry and inducted into the MMP Hall of Fame by Commander Joseph W. Clark.
In September 2008, President George W. Bush nominated Greenwood to succeed Makoto Fujimura for a six-year term to the National Council on the Arts[16] expiring in 2014. He was confirmed by the Senate via voice vote in October 2008. In 2015, President Barack Obama nominated Esperanza Spalding to succeed Greenwood; however, the nomination was not acted upon by the Senate,[17] allowing Greenwood to continuing serving under Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump until the Senate confirmed a nominated successor.[18] In June 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Kamilah Forbes to succeed Greenwood.[19] In September 2021, Greenwood told Fox and Friends that the Biden administration sent him an email informing him that the president had already nominated his replacement on the National Council on the Arts and expressed his "shock" at being replaced.[20] Forbes got confirmed by the Senate on February 17, 2022, via voice vote.[21]
Theater
In 1995, Greenwood took a break from his touring schedule to spend more time with his family. In his time off, he elected to build a theater in Sevierville, Tennessee, and in April 1996, the Lee Greenwood Theater opened its doors. This gave Greenwood the opportunity to perform daily shows, in addition to being with his family.[22] The theater operated for five seasons, and closed for Greenwood to continue touring. The former theater building is host to a church.
The "God Bless the USA" Bible
In May 2021, to commemorate the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, Greenwood published the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible. This edition of the Bible has the U.S. flag on its leather cover and includes the texts of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the chorus of "God Bless the USA" in Greenwood's handwriting.[23] The text of the Bible was intended to be the New International Version,[24] but Zondervan, the division of HarperCollins that owns the rights to the New International Version, withheld them rather than associate Christianity with U.S. nationalism, and it used the King James Version, which is in the public domain in the United States.[25] It created further controversy in 2024 when former president Donald Trump promoted a new edition of it[26] that later became known as printed in China.[27]
Family
Greenwood is married to former Miss Tennessee USA Kimberly Payne, his fourth wife and fifth marriage.[28] The former Miss Payne is 25 years his junior. They have two sons together, Dalton and Parker Greenwood.[29] Previously he was married four times, the first two of them to Edna Greenwood, whom he divorced and remarried.[30] He has four children from his earlier marriages.[31]
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