Vince Gill

About Vince Gill

Vincent Grant "Vince" Gill (born April 12, 1957) is an American neotraditional country singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He has achieved commercial success and fame both as frontman to the country rock band Pure Prairie League in the 1970s, and as a solo artist beginning in 1983, where his talents as a vocalist and musician have placed him in high demand as a guest vocalist, and a duet partner. Gill has recorded more than twenty studio albums, charted over forty singles on the U.S. Billboard charts as Hot Country Songs, and has sold more than 22 million albums. He has been honored by the Country Music Association with 18 CMA Awards, including two Entertainer of the Year awards and five Male Vocalist Awards. Gill has also earned 19 Grammy Awards, more than any other male Country music artist. In 2007, Gill was inducted into the esteemed Country Music Hall of Fame.

Gill was born in Norman, Oklahoma. His father, J. Stanley Gill, was a lawyer and administrative law judge who played in a country music band part time and encouraged Gill to pursue a musical career. His homemaker mother, Jerene, played the harmonica. At the encouragement of his father, Gill learned to play several instruments, including the banjo and guitar, before he started high school at Oklahoma City's Northwest Classen High School. He first played with a teenage band called Bluegrass Revue in the late 1970s. The other members were: Billy Perry on the banjo, Bobby Clark on the mandolin & Mike Perry on the bass. (Bobby Clark plays with a group called Williams and Clark now.) While in high school, he performed with "Mountain Smoke," a bluegrass band that once opened for Pure Prairie League. After he graduated, he played in a number of bluegrass bands, including Ricky Skaggs' "Boone Creek"; later, he became a member of Rodney Crowell's road band, The Cherry Bombs.

Gill debuted on the national scene with the country rock band Pure Prairie League in 1979, appearing on that band's album Can't Hold Back. Gill is the lead singer on their hit song "Let Me Love You Tonight" (1980), which he was still performing in concert years later - thus, he said, confusing many fans who knew him only from his subsequent solo work. Gill appeared on two subsequent albums along with then-wife Janis Gill before signing as a solo with RCA Records in 1983. He first charted while on that label. In 1989, he switched to MCA Records where he recorded his breakthrough hit "When I Call Your Name."