No single artist has done more since 1980 to shape the course of country music than Ricky Skaggs, the dynamic tenor from Kentucky. Skaggs's virtuoso musicianship and firm belief in the power of traditional mountain music brought Nashville's slide into country-pop to a screeching halt, paving the way to stardom for a new wave of young traditionalists in a score of styles. Today Skaggs rests comfortably at the pinnacle of country stardom and is revered in some circles as the savior of the genre. [This bio is excerpted from a longer treatment by Anne Janette Johnson at Music Boulevard]

"Without the pioneering work of Ricky Skaggs, there probably wouldn't be any new country or new traditionalist music," wrote Andrew Vaughan in Who's Who in New Country. "Before George Strait was popular, before Reba McEntire was a superstar, before The Judds captured hearts with their mountain harmonies, Skaggs was breaking through country music's lowest ebb. The late seventies and early eighties had seen country go pop... But Skaggs re-introduced the backwoods sound and with an impeccably tight band and clear, snappy bluegrass-influenced productions, his records and live shows came like a breath of fresh air through a stagnant Nashville smog."

Skaggs was certainly the ideal candidate to rescue country from the brink of blandness. He was--and is--enormously talented and ambitious, with a youthful determination to make a name for himself without sacrificing his artistic ideals. "I'm as country as corn bread," he told People magazine. "I don't think I could go pop if I had a mouthful of firecrackers."

Skaggs's success was accomplished without stylistic compromise. His albums featured acoustic instruments and tight bluegrass harmonies, and he recorded such bluegrass classics as "Children Go Where I Send Thee" and "Uncle Pen." In his book Country Music U.S.A., Bill C. Malone analyzed the many reasons for Skaggs' popularity. "Skaggs is blessed with the clearest and most expressive tenor voice that has been heard in country music since Ira Louvin, and his instrumental virtuosity is breathtaking," Malone observed. "Skaggs has been hailed as a traditionalist, and he still refers to his music as 'bluegrass' and openly speaks of building a repertory that will appeal to hard-core country fans... But, of course, he is not purely a traditionalist, even though he does traditional material beautifully. His music is informed by the wide range of music that he and other young people have heard and played in today's world--and by the experiences of living in a society vastly different from that of their parents."

Instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, performer, and producer--Skaggs has filled all of these shoes for himself and other Nashville superstars. The extent of his success is doubly amazing in view of his age --he was born in 1954. The 1990s are likely to see further accomplishments from the affable Skaggs, who spends some 125 days a year touring in his custom-designed bus. In Stereo Review, Alanna Nash called Skaggs's resuscitation of the old-time style "a noble and striking effort, a tour de force of indomitable American musical spirit."