Music Monday: Alabama and “Forty Hour Week (For a Livin’)”
Posted By RichC on July 1, 2024
It is hard to believe that the country music band “Wild Country” from Fort Payne, Alabama, now known as “Alabama” has been around since 1969? I was surprised.
The band’s popularity exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s after 2 hit songs in 1977 and a record deal with RCA Records (about the time I started listening). Their mark was made in American music nationwide and continues to this day.
The bands story is one of many aspiring young musicians and their early history is worth reading. There’s a short quoted section below the break highlighted below, but the band’s recognizable 1985 hit “40 Hour Week” is today’s Music Monday highlight. A great band, excellent story and terrific music.
The group became a professional band in 1972, adding drummer Bennett Vartanian and changing their name to Wildcountry. During this time, the group accepted a position playing at the now-defunct Canyon Land theme park near Fort Payne The park would bring in established stars, such as Jerry Wallace, Bobby Bare, and Narvel Felts, and the band would back them, afterwards performing a one-hour dance set. After a while, with opportunities for the band slow to materialize, a discouraged Cook took a government job in Anniston, Alabama. Owen was studying English at Jacksonville State University, and Cook had an electronics job. The trio shared a $56-a-month apartment in Anniston, and worked to keep the band afloat with night and weekend gigs. The group decided to become professional musicians in 1973, and began performing at bars throughout the Southeast. In March, the band relocated to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, performing six nights a week at a club named The Bowery for tips. They made their best money performing cover songs of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Merle Haggard. The group could not secure a record contract and began to self-finance recordings. The group borrowed $4,000 from a Fort Payne bank to record and release their own albums to sell at shows. Vartanian dropped out of the group, and following a rotation of four more drummers, they settled on Rick Scott in 1974.
The group sent out demo tapes to record companies but received few responses until executives at GRT Records signed the band to a one-record contract, issuing their debut single, “I Wanna Be with You Tonight”, in 1977. GRT was more interested in the band as songwriters, and convinced the group to change their name to The Alabama Band, later shortened to just Alabama. The song only reached number 78 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, and GRT declared bankruptcy the following year. Due to a hidden clause in their contract, Alabama was forbidden from recording with another label. For the next two years, the band raised money to buy out their contract and they began recording again in 1979. Following self-recorded efforts Wildcountry (1976) and Deuces Wild (1977), Alabama Band No. 3 (1979) became the band’s third album, and the band performed over 300 shows on the road that year. The group hired independent radio promoters to receive radio play for the single “I Wanna Come Over”, and they sent hand-written letters to program directors and DJs nationwide. It received the attention of Dallas-based MDJ Records, who signed the band. Scott left the group at this time, and was replaced by Mark Herndon, a rock drummer later credited with bringing the band their signature sound. “I Wanna Come Over”, became their first radio hit, reaching the top 40 in the Billboard country chart.
Comments