Jimmie Dale Gilmore | Artist
Jimmie Dale Gilmore is an American country singer-songwriter born 1945 in Amarillo, Texas. His earliest musical influence was Hank Williams and the honky tonk brand of country music that his father played. In the 1950s, he was exposed to the emerging rock and roll of other Texans such as Roy Orbison and Lubbock native Buddy Holly, as well as to Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, the latter two being in the line up at a concert he attended on October 15, 1955, at Lubbock's Fair Park Coliseum. He was profoundly influenced in the 1960s by The Beatles and Bob Dylan and the folk music and blues revivals in that decade. With a warm, warbling voice and folksy, personable style, Jimmie Dale Gilmore is the archetype of a Texas singer/songwriter, with his eye for the dusty beauty of the Southwest meshing beautifully with the Zen cowboy demeanor that informs his music and his persona. After briefly attending Texas Tech University, Gilmore spent much of the 1970s in an ashram in Denver, Colorado, studying metaphysics with teenaged Indian guru Prem Rawat, also known as Maharaji. His early work with Joe Ely and Butch Hancock as the Flatlanders, was a crucial precursor to both the outlaw country and alt-country movements. The first Flatlanders recording All American Music (1972), released on Sun records, was in fact attributed to Jimmie Dale & The Flatlanders. In the 1980s, he moved to Austin where his first solo album Fair and Square was released in 1988. In 1994, Gilmore teamed up with Willie Nelson to contribute the song "Crazy" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Country produced by the Red Hot Organisation. As a recording artist Gilmore takes his sweet time, having only released 9 studio albums in the 51 years since All American Music. Standout albums include All American Music (1972), Jimmie Dale Gilmore (1989), Spinning Around the Sun (1993), Braver New World (1996), and Come on Back (2005). Also the Flatlanders albums are well recommended. Gilmore appeared as himself in Peter Bogdanovich's 1993 film The Thing Called Love, a love story about young songwriters in Nashville. He also had a small but memorable role in the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski where he portrayed a bowler named Smokey, an aging, emotionally fragile pacifist threatened with a pistol by The Dude's best friend and sidekick Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman.
Artist Website: jimmiedalegilmore.com
Featured Albums: Jimmie Dale Gilmore
Related Artists: Joe Ely, The Flatlanders, Butch Hancock
