His break came when he was signed to Warner Bros. He soon split time as a cook and occasional singer at the Nashville Palace nightclub near the Opryland Hotel, performing as Randy Ray before changing his name to Randy Travis. He grew up in a large, country music-loving family on a farm in rural North Carolina and began playing music locally with his brother, eventually moving to Nashville with his manager, Lib Hatcher, in August 1981. His early life and career were hardscrabble.

His success also opened the door to numerous acting roles in movies and television series.

Travis’s understated traditional vocal twang and square-jawed sex appeal endeared him both to hard-country loyalists and to millions of fans beyond country’s core boundaries. Starting in 1986 with his best-selling debut album Storms of Life, Randy Bruce Traywick (later renamed Travis) became the de facto leader of a handful of tradition-minded artists who dramatically changed the course of country music’s evolution beginning in 1986. Randy Travis Leads the Traditional Country Takeover

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