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Randy Travis

Randy Bruce Traywick (born May 4, 1959), known professionally as Randy Travis, is an American country music and gospel music singer and songwriter, as well as a film and television actor. Active since 1979, he has recorded over 20 studio albums and charted over 50 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including sixteen that reached the number-one position.

Travis's commercial success began in the mid-1980s with the release of his album Storms of Life, which sold more than four million copies. Travis followed up his successful debut with a string of platinum and multi-platinum albums. By the mid-1990s, Travis saw a decline in his chart success. In 1997, he left Warner Bros. Records for DreamWorks Records; he signed to Word Records for a series of gospel albums beginning in 2000 before transferring back to Warner at the end of the 21st century's first decade. Travis sold over 25 million records and has won seven Grammy Awards, eleven ACM Awards, eight Dove Awards, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2016, Travis was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Major songs of his include "On the Other Hand", "Forever and Ever, Amen", "I Told You So", "Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart", and "Three Wooden Crosses".

Travis is noted as a key figure in the neotraditional country movement, a return to more traditional sounds within the genre following the country pop crossovers of the early 1980s. He is considered an influence on later generations of country singers, and is noted for his baritone singing voice. Nearly all of his albums were produced or co-produced by Kyle Lehning, with frequent co-writing credits from Travis, Paul Overstreet, Don Schlitz, and Skip Ewing. Since surviving a near-fatal stroke in 2013, which severely limited his singing and speaking ability, he has released archival recordings and made limited public appearances. James Dupré has toured singing his songs with Travis's road band. In 2024, Travis released "Where That Came From", his first studio recording since his stroke, where his voice was re-created using artificial intelligence.

Travis also holds several film and television acting roles, including the television movies Wind in the Wire and A Holiday to Remember, episodes of the television series Matlock, and the Patrick Swayze movie Black Dog.

Biography
Randy Bruce Traywick was born May 4, 1959, in Marshville, North Carolina. He is the second of six children to Bobbie Traywick (née Tucker) and Harold Traywick. Harold Traywick worked as a meat packer and also built houses. He also enjoyed listening to country music such as Ernest Tubb and Patsy Cline, in addition to singing, playing guitar, and writing his own songs. By the time Randy was eight years old, his father would send him and his brothers to the house of a friend named Kate Magnum, who would teach him and his brothers Ricky and David how to play guitar. Harold also constructed a stage behind the family house, where he would invite friends over to hear his sons sing. Randy and Ricky performed publicly for the first time in 1968 at a talent show held at the local elementary school; while the brothers did not win, they continued to perform at local talent shows, with David later joining to accompany them on bass guitar.

Randy dropped out of school in the ninth grade. As a teenager, he committed a number of criminal offenses. These included reckless driving after he crashed Ricky's car in a cornfield, breaking into a church to hold a party, driving under the influence, resisting arrest, and stealing knives and watches from a local store. On his seventeenth birthday, Randy was arrested for public intoxication and faced imprisonment. Despite his charges, Don Cusic noted in the 1990 book Randy Travis: The King of the New Country Traditionalists that his parents still supported him, as they would pay his bail and support him in court whenever he was arrested.

In 1977, the Traywicks entered a talent competition held in Charlotte, North Carolina, after hearing an advertisement for it on the radio. The grand prize for the contest was $100 cash and a recording session. The contest consisted of eight semi-final audition rounds held every Tuesday at Country City USA, a nightclub co-owned by Randy's then-future wife, Mary Elizabeth "Lib" Hatcher. At the performance, Randy played rhythm guitar and sang, while Ricky played lead guitar. However, Ricky had to drop out of the competition partway through because he had to serve time at a youth detention center, leaving Randy to continue as a solo act. Randy ended up winning the competition. After doing so, he began to hold a conversation with Hatcher about his then-impending arrest charges for hot-wiring a neighbor's truck. Hatcher and disc jockey John Harper, who also worked at the club, chose to represent Randy in court, which led to him serving probation and coming under the custody of the Hatchers in lieu of a jail sentence. Additionally, Hatcher employed Randy as a singer at Country City USA. During this time, Hatcher advised him on his singing and performance. Harold would attend Randy's performances in this timespan, but was later banned from the club after altercations with patrons.

Music career
Hatcher booked a number of country music singers to perform at her club as a means of making connections with country music executives in Nashville, Tennessee. One such singer, Joe Stampley, agreed to produce a session for Traywick in Nashville. Hatcher paid $10,000 for the recording session and promotion, which was done through a small independent label based out of Shreveport, Louisiana, called Paula Records. The session accounted for the singles "She's My Woman" and "I'll Take Any Willing Woman". Traywick and Hatcher distributed copies of the single to radio stations throughout the Southern United States in 1979. The former reached 91 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. After the failure of these singles, Hatcher and Traywick continued submitting demo recordings to executives but were unable to garner interest at first. In 1981, Traywick and Hatcher chose to move to Nashville to put themselves closer to the center of the country music industry. Despite this, they would still travel back to Charlotte on weekends to tend to business at Country City USA, which by that point had relocated to a larger building. They supported themselves by renting out part of their Nashville house to songwriter Keith Stegall, who used it as an office. Stegall then introduced the two to song publisher and disc jockey Charlie Monk at a golf game, which led to him performing songs for Monk. Stegall also submitted Traywick's demos to various Nashville producers to garner interest in a recording contract. Traywick recorded one session with producer John Ragsdale for the intent of signing him to Curb Records, but the label ultimately chose not to sign him.

In 1982 Hatcher began managing a nightclub called the Nashville Palace through the recommendation of singer Ray Pillow. She initially hired Traywick to wash dishes, but soon began to have him perform there as well. By this point, the two had begun crediting the singer as Randy Ray, as they thought the name was easier to pronounce than "Traywick". Hatcher also rented her in-house office space out to other industry executives, including staff of Radio & Records magazine; meanwhile, Randy Ray continued to work on his songwriting under Stegall's mentorship. By the end of the year, Hatcher and Nashville Palace owner John Hobbs financed an independent album titled Randy Ray Live at the Nashville Palace, which consisted of ten songs recorded by him at the Palace. Stegall served as producer on this project. He also auditioned on You Can Be a Star, a talent show on the former Nashville Network (TNN), in early 1983. He placed second behind Lang Scott, who would later marry country singer Linda Davis. Ralph Emery also invited him to perform several times on the TNN talk show Nashville Now, which he hosted.

Despite the exposure from Nashville Now, he still failed to secure a recording contract throughout 1984. Martha Sharp, then working in artists and repertoire (A&R) at Warner Bros. Records's Nashville division, attended a seminar in late 1984 where executives suggested signing attractive young artists with a "traditional" sound. Through mutual contacts with Monk and Stegall, she became aware of Randy Ray, who at the time was working on more songs with the latter. Sharp arranged for him to be signed to a contract initially consisting of four songs. Executives disliked the name "Randy Ray" as they thought it sounded "podunk", and thus Sharp suggested "Randy Travis".

1985–1986: Storms of Life
Travis signed with Warner Nashville in early 1985. His first contract with them resulted in the recording of four songs. These were "Prairie Rose", "On the Other Hand", "Carrying Fire", and "Reasons I Cheat". "Prairie Rose" appeared on the soundtrack of the 1985 film Rustlers' Rhapsody. Keith Whitley had also recorded "On the Other Hand" for his 1985 debut album L.A. to Miami. These four songs were all recorded in the same session, with Stegall and Kyle Lehning co-producing. At the time, Lehning was best known for producing Dan Seals and had also worked with Stegall on his own singles for Epic Records. Although Lehning did not want to work with Travis at first, he chose to do so after Monk and Sharp encouraged him. After recording these songs, Travis appeared on Nashville Now again on May 17, 1985, where he performed with Johnny Russell and Lorrie Morgan. Warner also included him among the performers at their talent showcase at the Fan Fair (now CMA Music Festival) in downtown Nashville in mid-1985. Warner released "On the Other Hand" in August 1985, and the song charted at number 67 on Hot Country Songs before falling off. The follow-up "1982" peaked at number six on the country charts in early 1986, thus becoming Travis's first hit single. Following the success of "1982", Travis was booked as an opening act for Barbara Mandrell and T. G. Sheppard, leading to both Travis and Hatcher quitting the Palace. The song's success also led to him performing on the Grand Ole Opry for the first time in March 1986. He also received an award for Top New Male Vocalist from the Academy of Country Music (ACM). This was followed by further opening act gigs throughout early 1986, which resulted in gigs from California to Georgia. For this capacity, Travis and Hatcher bought a former bread truck which they converted to a tour bus, in addition to hiring a five-piece band to perform with him. One of the band members was then-future Shenandoah member Rocky Thacker.

After "1982" became Travis's first top-ten hit, Warner executives chose to re-release "On the Other Hand". Nick Hunter, who promoted singles to country radio for Warner, noted that the song was popular in sales and listener demand despite its initially low chart peak. Although some radio disc jockeys considered the song "too country", it received very high requests from listeners and continued to sell strongly. Upon re-release, "On the Other Hand" went on to become his first number-one single, reaching the top of the Billboard country charts in July 1986. "On the Other Hand" and "1982" were both included on Travis's debut album for Warner, Storms of Life. The album was released on June 2, 1986, and sold over 100,000 copies in its first sales week in addition to reaching number one on Top Country Albums. Six years after its release, the album was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), honoring U.S. sales of three million copies. One of the tracks, Travis's own composition "Send My Body", had previously appeared on the Randy Ray album in 1982. Lehning and Stegall co-produced the album; they also contributed on keyboard and guitar respectively. Other musicians on the project included drummers Eddie Bayers, Larrie Londin, and James Stroud; guitarist Larry Byrom; Dobro player Jerry Douglas; bassist David Hungate; and backing vocals from Lehning, Baillie & the Boys, Paul Davis, and Paul Overstreet. The album produced another number-one in "Diggin' Up Bones" in late 1986, and a number two single in "No Place Like Home" in early 1987. Overstreet wrote "On the Other Hand" with Don Schlitz, "Diggin' Up Bones" with Nat Stuckey, and "No Place Like Home" by himself. The latter was also Travis's first single to be promoted through a music video.

In late 1986, Travis was asked to host the Country Music Association (CMA) Awards telecast to replace original host Ricky Skaggs, who had to back out after his son was hospitalized with a neck injury. Travis won the Horizon Award (now called Best New Artist) at that ceremony, while also receiving a nomination for Male Vocalist of the Year. Additionally, "On the Other Hand" was nominated for Single of the Year and Storms of Life for Album of the Year. On November 15, 1986, Travis performed a concert with George Jones and Patty Loveless in Charlotte, North Carolina, where Charlotte's then-mayor Harvey Gantt declared November 15 to be "Randy Travis Day". A similar acknowledgement was passed as a city ordinanace in Travis's hometown of Marshville soon afterward. Warner also issued a Christmas single in December 1986 titled "White Christmas Makes Me Blue", which sold over 79,000 copies. By year's end, Skaggs had inducted Travis into the Grand Ole Opry, which was followed by Travis performing "Diggin' Up Bones". "Diggin' Up Bones" also accounted for Travis's first Grammy Award nomination, in the category of Best Male Country Vocal Performance, in early 1987.

Storms of Life also received critical favor. Mark A. Humphrey of AllMusic wrote that Travis had "astonishing Lefty Frizzell-style pipes, excellent material, and sympathetic production". An uncredited review in Billboard also described Travis's voice with favor, additionally stating that " He has the materialintrospective lyrics and gorgeous melodiesand the understated, classic country production here to make the most of his gifts." Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Jack Hurst also compared Travis's voice favorably to both Frizzell and Merle Haggard, while also praising the lyrics of the singles in particular.

1987–1988: Always & Forever
In early 1987, Travis released the single "Forever and Ever, Amen". It held the number-one position on the Billboard country charts for three weeks, becoming the first song to hold that position for that long since Johnny Lee's "Lookin' for Love" in 1980. The song served as the lead single to his second Warner album Always & Forever. As with "On the Other Hand", Schlitz and Overstreet co-wrote the song. Corresponding with this song's success, Travis won Male Vocalist of the Year from the ACM awards, where Storms of Life won Album of the Year and "On the Other Hand" won both Song and Single of the Year. During the awards ceremony, Travis performed "Forever and Ever, Amen" live for the first time. Cusic described the song in 1990 as a "career record". In addition to topping the country charts, "Forever and Ever, Amen" was a minor hit single in the United Kingdom, reaching number 55 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2019, editors of The Tennessean listed it as one of the 100 greatest country songs of all time, while also referring to it as Travis's signature song. Two years later, "Forever and Ever, Amen" became Travis's highest-certified single, receiving double-platinum RIAA certification.

Always & Forever included Lehning as producer, with many of the same vocal and instrumental contributors as its predecessor such as Baillie & the Boys, Douglas, and Overstreet. Lehning worked with Travis, Hatcher, and Sharp to pick from several hundred songs before determining which ones would appear on the album. One track on the album was Dennis Linde's composition "What'll You Do About Me", which was previously released by Steve Earle in 1984; the song would later be released by the Forester Sisters in 1992, and Doug Supernaw in 1995. During the promotion of the album, Travis began to notice strain on his vocal cords, which was treated through consultations at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Always & Forever spent 43 weeks at the top of the Billboard Top Country Albums charts, breaking the previous longevity record of 28 weeks set by Alabama's Mountain Music earlier in the decade.

"I Won't Need You Anymore (Always and Forever)", "Too Gone Too Long", and "I Told You So" were all released as singles from Always & Forever, with all three reaching number one between 1987 and 1988. Travis wrote "I Told You So" by himself in 1982 around the time he attempted to sign with Curb Records. Monk had also submitted the song to Lee Greenwood at that time, although he declined it. Both Darrell Clanton and Barbara Mandrell had recorded the song as well, the former as the B-side of his 1985 single "I Forgot That I Don't Live Here Anymore". In 1996, the album received Travis's highest certification of quintuple platinum for sales of five million copies.

Overall, Always & Forever and its singles accounted for a number of award wins and nominations for Travis. "Forever and Ever, Amen" won both Song and Single of the Year at the following year's ACM awards (honoring the year 1987), where Travis also won Top Male Vocalist. He was also nominated for Entertainer of the Year, while "Forever and Ever, Amen" received a Music Video of the Year nomination and Always & Forever was nominated for Album of the Year. At the 1987 CMA Awards, Travis won Male Vocalist of the Year and was nominated for Entertainer of the Year while "Forever and Ever, Amen" won Single of the Year and was nominated for Music Video of the Year and Always & Forever won Album of the Year. Additionally, Always & Forever accounted for Travis's first Grammy Award win, for Best Male Country Vocal Performance at the 30th Annual Grammy Awards in March 1988. Stephen Thomas Erlewine, writing for AllMusic, thought the album "rivaled its predecessor in its quality" while also stating that it had "lean" production and "nuanced" vocals.

1988–1990: Old 8×10 and No Holdin' Back
Travis continued to tour throughout the United States in 1988, including a spot on the Marlboro Country Music Tour in Madison Square Garden, which also featured Alabama, the Judds, and George Strait. That same year he released his third Warner album Old 8×10. The album was originally slated to be released on July 12, but was moved up to June 30 to make it eligible for CMA Awards. Nine years after its release, it was certified double-platinum. The first three singles off the album all went to number one between 1988 and early 1989. These were "Honky Tonk Moon", "Deeper Than the Holler" (another Overstreet-Schlitz collaboration), and "Is It Still Over?" The fourth and final single, "Promises" (which Travis wrote with John Lindley), was much less successful with a number 17 peak on Hot Country Songs. Music journalists Tom Roland and Colin Larkin both attributed the song's failure to it featuring just vocals and acoustic guitar. Old 8×10 became his third consecutive album to reach the number one position on Top Country Albums. It also accounted for Travis's second consecutive Grammy Award for Best Male Country Vocal Performance win. "I Told You So" received a Single of the Year nomination from the Academy of Country Music, while Travis himself was nominated as both Entertainer of the Year and Top Male Vocalist in 1988 and 1989. Also in 1988, the Country Music Association awarded him as Male Vocalist of the Year a second time, along with an Entertainer of the Year nomination, as well as Single and Song of the Year nominations for "I Told You So". The foundation also nominated Old 8×10 for Album of the Year alongside additional Male Vocalist and Entertainer of the Year nominations. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Brian Mansfield stated that it "lacks the monster hits of his debut but wears just as well." In 1997, Old 8×10 received its highest certification of double-platinum.

Travis ended 1989 with two studio albums. First was a Christmas album titled An Old Time Christmas, which included the previously-released Christmas single "White Christmas Makes Me Blue". The other tracks included a mix of Christmas standards and original songs, one of which ("How Do I Wrap My Heart Up for Christmas") Travis co-wrote with Overstreet. A month later was the studio release No Holdin' Back. Prior to the album's release, Travis had recorded a cover of Brook Benton's "It's Just a Matter of Time" with producer Richard Perry for a covers album titled Rock, Rhythm & Blues. Because he liked the sound of the recording, he chose to include it on No Holdin' Back as the album's first single. The rendition reached number one on the country charts in December 1989. At the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards, this rendition was nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. After the "It's Just a Matter of Time" cover came "Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart". Written by Hugh Prestwood, the song held the number one position on Billboard Hot Country Songs for four weeks, accounting for Travis's longest stay at that position. The third and final single from No Holdin' Back was "He Walked on Water", which peaked at number two. The song was the first successful cut for songwriter Allen Shamblin. Also included on No Holdin' Back were a cover of Marty Robbins' "Singing the Blues" and the track "Somewhere in My Broken Heart", later a single for its co-writer Billy Dean. Thom Jurek's review for AllMusic praised Travis's vocal deliveries on "It's Just a Matter of Time" and "Hard Rock Bottom of Your Heart" while also calling Lehning's production "flawless". In a review for Cash Box magazine, Kimmy Wix described "He Walked on Water" as having "detailed lyrics to which we can all relate" and thought the song was well suited for Travis's voice.

1990–1992: Heroes & Friends, High Lonesome, and greatest-hits albums
Travis's first album to be released in the 1990s was Heroes & Friends, a duets album. Among the duet artists featured were Tammy Wynette, Merle Haggard, George Jones, B.B. King, and Clint Eastwood. According to journalist Gary Graff, Travis had wanted to record a duet album for several years, and he and Hatcher spent over a year and a half arranging for the recording sessions. The album accounted for only two singles in "A Few Ole Country Boys" (a duet with Jones) and title track "Heroes and Friends" (the only track on the album not to be a duet). Both songs peaked within the top 10 of the country charts between late 1990 and early 1991. Travis performed "Heroes and Friends" at the 1991 CMA Awards telecast, joined by Jones, Wynette, Vern Gosdin, and Roy Rogers. Unlike his previous albums, Heroes & Friends was met with mixed reception from critics. Austin American-Statesman writer Lee Nichols thought that the album's songs were "not particularly notable, but nonetheless enjoyable". Knight Ridder writer Dan DeLuca (in a review re-published in The Anniston Star) praised the duets with Haggard and Jones, and considered the duet version of Dolly Parton's "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind" to be the strongest track, although he also panned the contributions of King and Eastwood. In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Alanna Nash thought that "[t]he guests show up more to bolster Travis' profile than to actually perform full-out", although she praised Loretta Lynn's duet vocals on "Shopping for Dresses". Despite the mixed reception, Heroes & Friends certified platinum in 1991. Travis also noted that 1990 was the first year in which he did not receive any ACM or CMA awards, but that he was still receiving significant radio airplay and sales, and positive feedback from fans in concert. Relatedly, Mansfield and Colin Larkin both observed that in the early 1990s, Travis's success began to diminish as newer artists such as Clint Black and Garth Brooks grew in popularity.

Travis's next studio album was 1991's High Lonesome, led off by the single "Point of Light". George H. W. Bush, then President of the United States, commissioned Schlitz and Thom Schuyler to write the song as a tie-in to his "thousand points of light" campaign for volunteerism. Because of its inspiration, Travis noted that journalists often asked him about political matters, and he refused to answer them as he did not think the song itself was political. He also performed the song for a number of events intended to honor American soldiers returning from Operation Desert Storm. Next was Travis's twelfth number-one "Forever Together", one of several songs he wrote with Alan Jackson while the two were on tour together in 1991. These collaborations also produced the album's next two singles "Better Class of Losers" and "I'd Surrender All" between late 1991 and early 1992, as well as Jackson's number one single "She's Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues)" later in 1992. Jackson also co-wrote the track "Allergic to the Blues", while Travis also co-wrote "I'm Gonna Have a Little Talk" (featuring backing vocals from gospel group Take 6 ) and "Oh, What a Time to Be Me" with Schlitz. Travis said that he intentionally wrote more songs for the album than previous ones, as he had fewer tour dates and thus had more time to focus on songwriting. Jurek praised the Jackson co-writes in particular, highlighting their lyrics and vocal deliveries in his review for AllMusic. Nash also praised the lyrics on the songs co-written by Jackson, while also stating that Travis "never sounded so relaxed or so confident".

Later the same year, Warner released a pair of greatest hits albums: Greatest Hits, Volume One and Greatest Hits, Volume Two. In addition to featuring most of his hit singles to this point, the projects also included four new tracks and the album cut "Reasons I Cheat" from Storms of Life. Among the new tracks, "If I Didn't Have You" and "Look Heart, No Hands" both went to number one upon release as singles that year. Skip Ewing and Max D. Barnes wrote the former, while Trey Bruce and Russell Smith wrote the latter. Despite these songs' successes on radio, their follow-up "An Old Pair of Shoes" only reached number 21 upon release in early 1993. Both greatest-hits albums certified platinum in 1995.

1992–1995: Wind in the Wire and This Is Me
Travis took a hiatus from touring in 1992 and 1993, citing exhaustion as the reason for doing so. He and Hatcher chose to spend time at a property in Maui they had acquired. According to Travis, the touring hiatus caused some fans and news reporters to believe he had retired, so he asked his publicists to put out press releases indicating he was "merely taking a break". During the hiatus, he released an album of Western music titled Wind in the Wire, a tie-in to a television movie of the same name in which he starred. The album was produced by session guitarist Steve Gibson, making it his first since the Randy Ray album not to be produced by Kyle Lehning. It was commercially unsuccessful, with none of its singles reaching top 40 on the Billboard charts. However, lead single "Cowboy Boogie" reached number 10 on the Canadian country music charts then published by RPM. Travis and one of his managers later attributed the album's commercial failure to its Western swing sound proving unpopular with radio.

In late 1993, Travis began working on a follow-up album with Lehning when he was contacted by a representative for the then-under construction MGM Grand Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nevada. The representative wanted Travis to be the first country artist to perform at the new venue once it opened, which inspired Travis to begin touring again. He and Hatcher joined with Jeff Davis, another former manager of Travis's who was then working with Brother Phelps, to assemble a backing band for the Las Vegas shows, which included Lehning as keyboardist. The Las Vegas shows, held in early 1994, were his first concerts in over 14 months. Due to the success of these shows, Travis resumed his touring schedule soon afterward. He re-established his existing touring band and performed at a showcase of Warner Bros. artists held in Nashville during the Country Radio Seminar, an annual promotional concert series held by Country Radio Broadcasters. At the same time, Travis continued writing and compiling songs for his next studio album. "Before You Kill Us All" was released on February 28, 1994, as the lead single to his next Warner album This Is Me. The song peaked at number two on the Billboard country charts. Travis and Lehning chose the song because the two wanted "story songs and some with a wink of humor". Similarly, he told Billboard in 1994 that the song was an example of a more modern and "rowdy" sound he wanted to achieve relative to his prior albums. It was followed later in the year by "Whisper My Name", his fifteenth number-one on Billboard. The album's title track and "The Box" were both top-ten hits between late 1994 and early 1995 as well. Travis wrote "The Box" with Buck Moore and later said he became emotional writing and performing the song, as its theme of a father struggling to express love to his children reminded him of his own "fractured" relationship with his father.

Bob Saporiti, then an executive at Warner Bros. Nashville, noted that the failure of Wind in the Wire and length of time since High Lonesome had created "angst" among label executives, but added that they considered This Is Me "back to the basics". To promote the album, Travis hosted an episode of the TNN talk show Music City Tonight; the network also re-aired the Country Radio Seminar concert. Jurek praised the lyrical contributions of Trey Bruce, Larry Gatlin, and Kieran Kane and considered "Whisper My Name" to be "among the greatest songs Travis has ever recorded". Nash thought that the lyrics of the singles were among Travis's strongest, also stating that the album had "zippier instrumental touches" than his 1980s albums. Additionally, Larkin stated that the album was "as strong as ever". By mid-1994, This Is Me was certified gold by the RIAA. Despite spending most of 1995 without a charted single, Travis continued to tour throughout the year alongside Sammy Kershaw and George Jones.

1996–1997: Full Circle
Travis's final album for Warner was Full Circle in 1996. Travis told Billboard prior to its release that he and Lehning spent over a year selecting songs for the album because they wanted to be sure they were fully satisfied with its content. Its lead single was "Are We in Trouble Now", a song written by Mark Knopfler. Both this song and follow-up "Would I" failed to reach the top 20 on the country charts, while neither "Price to Pay" nor a cover of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" (which also appeared on the soundtrack of the 1997 movie Traveller ) made top 40. Richmond Times-Dispatch writer Gordon Ely noted the failure of the album's lead single and questioned whether the album and Travis in general could still be successful in the long term, due to an influx of younger artists in the intervening years. Ely considered the album "strong as ever", with a focus on Lehning's production and Travis's voice, as well as the lyrics of "Price to Pay". Country Standard Time writer Don Yates found the influence of honky-tonk in certain songs and praised the lyrics and vocal delivery of "Are We in Trouble Now", but criticized "Would I" as "gimmicky" and closing track "Ants on a Log" as "trite". AllMusic writer Thom Owens said of Full Circle, "his mid-'90s albums suffered from a tendency to sound a bit too similar too each other. Full Circle solves that problem by simultaneously reaching back into his hardcore honky-tonk roots and moving toward more contemporary material".

In mid-1997, Travis announced that he had departed from Warner Bros. due to disagreements over the promotion of Full Circle, as well as concerns that the country music industry was beginning to move toward back country pop influences. Travis also observed at the time that Warner executives were not letting him, Lehning, and Hatcher have as much liberty on selecting singles as they had on previous albums. At the time of his departure from Warner, Travis was offered contracts by both Asylum Records and the then-new DreamWorks Records. Lehning had just become president of Asylum's Nashville division at the time, but Travis chose not to follow him to that label as he did not think Lehning's position was long-term.

1997–1999: DreamWorks Records
By August 1997, Travis had become the first artist signed to the Nashville branch of DreamWorks Records. The new label's president was musician and producer James Stroud, whom Travis knew because he had played drums on some of his earlier singles such as "Forever and Ever, Amen". Because Lehning's duties as president of Asylum left him temporarily unavailable as a producer, Stroud and Byron Gallimore (best known for his work with Tim McGraw) would produce Travis's music for DreamWorks. Travis's late-1997 single "Out of My Bones" was the first release for DreamWorks Nashville. Co-written by Gary Burr and Sharon Vaughn, it peaked at number two on the country charts in early 1998. It appeared on his first DreamWorks album You and You Alone, issued in April. The project also accounted for the top-ten hits "The Hole" and "Spirit of a Boy, Wisdom of a Man" and the top-20 "Stranger in My Mirror". Both "The Hole" and "Stranger in My Mirror" were co-written by Skip Ewing. "Spirit of a Boy, Wisdom of a Man" was previously recorded by Mark Collie on his 1995 album Tennessee Plates. Jeffrey B. Remz of Country Standard Time criticized the heavy drums on "I Did My Part", but otherwise praised the use of acoustic instruments and the strength of Travis's voice. Lincoln Journal Star writer L. Kent Wolgamott noted the presence of fiddle and steel guitar in the production while also calling Travis's voice "expressive".

In 1999, Travis was one of several artists on the collaborative song "Same Old Train", featured on the tribute album Tribute to Tradition. Other acts appearing on the song included Clint Black, Dwight Yoakam, Pam Tillis, and Marty Stuart, the last of whom also wrote and produced it. The track won a Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals for all artists involved. Travis's second and final DreamWorks album A Man Ain't Made of Stone also came out in 1999. The title track was a top-20 country hit by year's end, but the other singles—"Where Can I Surrender", "A Little Left of Center", and "I'll Be Right Here Loving You"—all failed to reach top 40. Gallimore and Stroud recorded the album largely in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Travis and Hatcher had a house at the time. Following the failure of the album's singles, Travis exited DreamWorks Records in October 2000. Shortly after his departure, Travis told Country Standard Time that he chose to leave DreamWorks because he felt the label was not properly distributing the album to stores. He also thought that Stroud's production style put too much emphasis on the instrumentation instead of his singing voice.

2000–2003: Switch to gospel and "Three Wooden Crosses"
While he was still on Warner, Travis had begun working with Lehning on a gospel music album. Other than a cover of "Amazing Grace", the two intentionally sought to include original content. Travis finished the tracks at a time when he was not on a record label. Through a connection Lehning had with Word Records executive Barry Landis, Travis was signed to that label in late 2000 and released the gospel album, by then titled Inspirational Journey. Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter provided guest vocals on the track "The Carpenter". Kenny Chesney sang duet vocals on the track "Baptism" (also titled "Down with the Old Man (Up with the New)"), which served as the first single. The two had previously recorded the track on Chesney's 1999 album Everywhere We Go. The project won Travis two Dove Awards in 2001: Bluegrass Album of the Year for the album itself, and Country Recorded Song of the Year for "Baptism". AllMusic reviewer Todd Everett found influences of bluegrass, Don Williams, and Lefty Frizzell, and found it consistent with Travis's 1980s and 1990s albums in tone. Alanna Nash of Entertainment Weekly was less favorable, as she thought that the album had strong opening tracks but added that "midway, it deteriorates into Nashville formula, with simplistic homilies [and] overblown production".

Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, Travis co-wrote and released a promotional patriotic single titled "America Will Always Stand". Proceeds from sales of the single were donated to the American Red Cross. He continued to record on Word Records as a gospel artist and put out his next album for the label, Rise and Shine, in late 2002. The album's lead single was "Three Wooden Crosses". According to Travis, Kim Williams and Doug Johnson had provided the song to Michael Peterson, who at the time was recording songs with Lehning. Peterson suggested Lehning take the song to Travis, for whom he thought it was better suited. By early 2003, "Three Wooden Crosses" became Travis's sixteenth and final number-one on Billboard Hot Country Songs. It also accounted for his highest solo peak on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 31. The project accounted for only one other single in "Pray for the Fish", which fell below top 40 on the country charts. Robert L. Doerschuk of AllMusic called the album "a strong performance, presented with flawless studio clarity and persuasive, understated feeling." Remz noted the consistency of Lehning's production and Travis's voice, as well as the presence of original songs co-written by Travis. In October 2003, Rise and Shine was certified gold. At the 2004 Grammy Awards, Rise and Shine won a Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album, while "Three Wooden Crosses" was nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance. In 2004, "Pray for the Fish" won a Dove Award for Country Recorded Song of the Year.

2003–2007: Continued gospel albums
His next gospel album was 2003's Worship & Faith. Unlike the previous projects, it included 20 acoustic covers of existing praise songs and hymns. Among the tracks included were "In the Garden", "How Great Thou Art", "Peace in the Valley", and "I'll Fly Away". Jurek called the album "direct, unfiltered, hard-line gospel at its best, by a master" in a review for AllMusic. Worship & Faith also became a gold album, and accounted for his second consecutive Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. A year later he released Passing Through. This album accounted for his last solo chart singles until 2024, "Four Walls" and "Angels". The latter was Travis's 50th entry on the chart. Co-writers on the album included Jamie O'Hara, Dennis Linde, Sharon Vaughn, and Travis. "Four Walls" was previously cut by Keith Harling, while the album track "That Was Us" was previously recorded by both Tracy Lawrence and Chad Brock, whose version was a single in 2003. Erlewine wrote of Passing Through, "It's inspirational music in the purest senseit doesn't preach, it instructs and inspires through its carefully observed tales."

His next gospel album was Glory Train: Songs of Faith, Worship, and Praise in 2005. It, too, won a Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Some tracks on the project included backing vocals from the Blind Boys of Alabama. Unlike the previous albums, it contained a mix of Black spirituals and contemporary Christian music such as Darlene Zschech's "Shout to the Lord". Erlewine thought the inclusion of such material made it "Travis's best gospel album to date". Writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Nick Marino praised Travis's "bluesy" vocals and the variety of songs. Altogether, Travis's first four gospel albums each won the Dove Award for Country Album of the Year, accounting for a streak of four consecutive wins in that category from 2003 to 2006. Also in 2006, Travis began recording footage for a Christmas DVD titled Christmas on the Pecos. This footage consisted of him singing Christmas songs and reading Helen Steiner Rice's poem "The Christmas Guest" inside the Big Room, a cavern at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Some of the performances also included vocal accompaniment from the Carlsbad First Baptist Church. The DVD was released in late 2006. Another Christmas project, the album Songs of the Season, followed in 2007.

2008–2011: Return to Warner and Carrie Underwood version of "I Told You So"
In 2008, he released his next studio album Around the Bend. The project was his first country music release since A Man Ain't Made of Stone. The album also placed him back on Warner, which had been a distributor of his Word Records releases. Travis promoted the album in an interview with WSM-FM radio host Bill Cody. He also released its lead single "Faith in You" as a free download from his website. "Dig Two Graves" was the project's second single. In addition to these songs, the album included a cover of Bob Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right". Jeff DeDekker of The Leader-Post noted that while it was not marketed as a Christian album, individual songs still held themes of "redemption and the afterlife". He praised the lyrics of "Dig Two Graves" and Travis's singing voice in particular. Erlewine criticized the use of a string section on "Faith in You", but otherwise reviewed the album's song selection and Travis's voice with favor. Despite not being explicitly marketed as a Christian album, it won Travis his eighth and final Dove Award, in the category of Country Album of the Year.

Carrie Underwood recorded a cover of "I Told You So" on her late-2007 album Carnival Ride. Her version was released in January 2009 as the album's fifth single. Two months after her rendition was released to radio, disc jockey Jesse Tack at WUBE-FM in Cincinnati, Ohio combined Underwood's recording with the vocal track from Travis's original and distributed the results to 75 other radio stations. Due to the popularity of the combined recording with radio listeners, Underwood and Travis performed the song together on American Idol soon after. The two also recorded an official duet version, which was sent to radio as well. With both Travis and Underwood receiving chart credit, the duet version of "I Told You So" peaked at number two on the country charts in 2009, and accounted for Travis's highest overall Billboard Hot 100 peak of number nine. The duet won both artists the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals.

Travis continued to record for Warner at the time. To honor the 25th anniversary of Storms of Life, he released Anniversary Celebration in 2011. The album consisted entirely of collaborations, on both re-recordings of Travis's previous singles and new songs. Among the artists involved were Zac Brown Band ("Forever and Ever, Amen"), Kenny Chesney ("He Walked on Water"), Jamey Johnson ("A Few Ole Country Boys"), as well as a medley of Travis's "Better Class of Losers" and Alan Jackson's "She's Got the Rhythm (And I Got the Blues)", both of which they co-wrote. George Jones, Lorrie Morgan, Ray Price, Connie Smith, Joe Stampley, and Gene Watson all provided vocals to the track "Didn't We Shine". Karlie Justus of Country Standard Time highlighted these tracks in particular among the strongest. Next on Warner was 2013's Influence Vol. 1: The Man I Am, consisting of cover songs such as Lefty Frizzell's "Saginaw, Michigan", Ernest Tubb's "Thanks a Lot", and George Jones's "Why Baby Why". The only track on the album not to be a cover was "Tonight I'm Playin' Possum", a duet with Joe Nichols. Remz noted that many of the cover songs chosen were written or performed by Merle Haggard, and spoke favorably of Lehning's "low-key" production.

2013–present: Career after stroke
Travis recorded and released very little content after 2013 after suffering a stroke, but he continued to be involved in individual projects. His first release after the stroke was a second volume of cover songs, Influence Vol. 2: The Man I Am, recorded prior to the stroke and released in 2014. In 2016, Travis was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. The same year, he appeared in the music video for "Forever Country", a multi-artist medley of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again", and "I Will Always Love You" done to honor the 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association.

In September 2019, Travis announced his return to touring. The tour features James Dupré as lead vocalist singing with Travis's backing band. Travis and his wife selected Dupré after seeing him perform on The Voice. During these shows, Travis makes selected appearances throughout, which include singing the final "Amen" at the end of "Forever and Ever, Amen". Announced as a twelve-city tour, the first performances with Dupré cut back to three concerts shortly before the tour began in October "due to unexpected production and technical issues related to the elaborate content of the show," with the intent to reschedule the canceled shows after the technical problems were resolved. As of 2023, Dupré still tours in this capacity alongside Travis.

Travis released Precious Memories (Worship & Faith) through Bill Gaither's Music label in February 2020. The project contained 12 songs that were recorded in 2003 at the Calvary Assembly of God Church in Orlando, Florida. In July 2020, Travis released a new single titled "Fool's Love Affair", consisting of a demo recording he had done in the early 1980s. This was followed in August 2023 by an announcement of a forthcoming album slated for release in 2024, consisting also of archival recordings.

In April 2024, Travis posted to TikTok a clip of a new song titled "Where That Came From", his first new studio recording since the stroke. The song was released to country radio soon afterward. CBS News correspondence revealed that Lehning created the song through voice cloning technology, wherein he used an artificial intelligence program to re-create Travis's voice. The program was trained on 42 recordings of Travis's voice as well as the voice of Dupré.

Musical style
Travis is noted as a key figure in the neotraditional country movement, a shift in mainstream country music sound toward a more traditional style after the country pop crossovers of the early 1980s. Brian Mansfield wrote in AllMusic that "At a time when most were still pursuing the pop-oriented sound of the Urban Cowboy craze, Travis's strong, honest vocal style and relatable songs of everyday life helped launch the New Traditionalist movement". In the Virgin Encyclopedia of Country Music, Colin Larkin wrote that Travis "was the first modern performer to demonstrate that country music could appeal to a wider public, and perhaps Garth Brooks owes him a debt." Alanna Nash similarly stated that Travis was a "standard bearer" for the genre's shift toward neotraditional country through later acts such as Brooks and Clint Black, whom she stated "immediately began to surpass Travis at the awards shows and in record stores." Regarding his physical appearance, Gary Graff stated that "his hunkish, weight-pumping good looks have established a physical sexuality that had been missing from many of country's male stars."

Writing for AllMusic, Mansfield found influences of Merle Haggard and George Jones in Travis's singing voice, and Mark A. Humphrey compared his voice to Lefty Frizzell on the same site. Nash called his voice a "glass-rattling baritone". Cusic found influences of Waylon Jennings and Ernest Tubb in tracks from Storms of Life, highlighting conventionally country lyrical themes of "lost love" in "1982" and infidelity in "Reasons I Cheat". Critics have also noted Lehning's long-time role as Travis's producer, with Jurek stating in a review of High Lonesome that the "production is unobtrusive and clean, setting Travis in perfect balance with a band that feels live." In a review for Country Standard Time, Karlie Justus referred to Travis as having a "trademark baritone" and "steel [guitar]-laced, storytelling catalog." Robert L. Doerschuk said that Travis has a "familiar unforced, relaxed style". Reviewing You and You Alone, Jeffrey B. Remz wrote that "He generally remains tried and true to his roots dishing out ballads with his usual great vocal phrasing...Travis doesn't rush through the songs, delivering them in a passionate, understated singing style" Of his shift to gospel music at the beginning of the 21st century, Erlewine wrote that such albums were "fruitful, producing a series of good, heartfelt records, yet they also had a nice side effect of putting commercialism way on the back burner, as the gospel albums were made without the charts in mind".

Travis has been cited as an influence on later generations of singers. Travis and Hatcher booked Daryle Singletary as an opening act and member of their touring band after hearing his vocals on the demo of "An Old Pair of Shoes", and he would often join Travis in this capacity to sing "It's Just a Matter of Time". After Singletary signed a recording contract with Giant Records in 1995, Travis co-produced Singletary's self-titled debut album. Nash referred to Singletary as a "protégé" of Travis's with a "sonorous baritone". Another singer who cites Travis as an influence is Josh Turner, who told Travis that "Diggin' Up Bones" was the first song he performed in public. The two collaborated in 2006 on the show CMT Cross Country. Travis contributed a guest vocal to Turner's cover of "Forever and Ever, Amen" on his 2020 covers album Country State of Mind. Turner and Chris Janson both cited "Diggin' Up Bones" as an influence when interviewed for a 2017 tribute concert. Justus also noted Turner as a successor to Travis in a review of Anniversary Celebration, where she also thought the themes of musical aspiration in "A Few Ole Country Boys", originally a duet with George Jones, were a "full circle moment" when Travis sang the same song with Jamey Johnson.

Acting
Travis made his acting debut in 1988, making an uncredited cameo in the Emilio Estevez movie Young Guns. Although most of his part was cut from the final movie, he sang the title track to the movie's soundtrack. He began acting on television in the early 1990s when he was cast as a house painter in an episode of Matlock. A year later he starred in the television movie Wind in the Wire which aired on ABC. Travis's 1993 album of the same name was a soundtrack to this film. Travis's acting roles would continue into the mid-1990s with such films as Frank and Jesse and Maverick. In late 1995, he and Rue McClanahan starred in the CBS television movie A Holiday to Remember. Before the movie's release, Travis stated that the appearance on Matlock earlier in the decade was what inspired him to take on more acting roles, and that A Holiday to Remember was one of his first roles not related to the Western genre. Coinciding with the release of You and You Alone, Travis starred alongside Patrick Swayze in the film Black Dog, playing the role of a country music singer. In turn, Swayze contributed backing vocals to the track "I Did My Part" on You and You Alone. In February 2024, Travis appeared as a special guest on an episode of the game show The Price Is Right.

Personal life
For much of his career, Travis was managed by Elizabeth "Lib" Hatcher, a former nightclub owner. The two of them lived together for several years at early points in their career. The couple secretly married on May 31, 1991 and bought a house on Maui soon afterward. Because of the secrecy of their marriage and the relocation to Maui, Travis later noted that many fans theorized he was gay and had contracted HIV/AIDS. In early 1991, the tabloid National Enquirer ran an article alleging that Travis was gay. In response, Travis considered suing the publication until a lawyer convinced him otherwise. Journalist Michael Corcoran noted that their marriage was seen as controversial at first, due both to its initial secrecy and the fact that Hatcher was 18 years older than Travis. Travis and Hatcher divorced in October 2010, citing incompatibility. Despite this, Hatcher continued to serve as his manager at the time. After a period of engagement, he married Mary Davis on March 21, 2015. The two of them live together on Chrysalis Ranch, a ranch they own outside Tioga, Texas.

Travis underwent a number of public intoxication incidents in the early 2010s. He was arrested in February 2012, when he was found in a parked car outside of a church in Sanger, Texas, with an open bottle of wine and smelling of alcohol. On August 7, 2012, state troopers in Grayson County, Texas, responded to a call that an unclothed man was lying in the road. Troopers reported that they arrived to find Travis unclothed and smelling of alcohol. The Texas Highway Patrol said that Travis crashed his car in a construction zone, and that when they attempted to apprehend him, Travis threatened the lives of the troopers. Travis was subsequently arrested for driving under the influence and making terroristic threats against a public servant. He posted bail in the amount of $21,500. Earlier in the same evening, just prior to the DUI arrest, Travis allegedly walked into a Tiger Mart convenience store naked, demanding cigarettes from the cashier, who in turn called the authorities. According to the store clerk, Travis left the store upon realizing he did not have any money to pay for the cigarettes. Travis filed a lawsuit to block police dashcam video of the incident from being released. After a five year legal battle, a judge ruled that the video did not violate his right to privacy, and the video was released to the public in December 2017. On January 31, 2013, Travis pleaded guilty to driving while under the influence in the August 7 incident and received two years' probation, a $2,000 fine, and a 180-day suspended jail sentence. Video of the incident was aired on the Investigation Discovery program Exposed: Naked Crimes on December 26, 2023.

In July 2013, Travis experienced difficulty breathing while working out at his home gym. He was hospitalized in Dallas, Texas for viral cardiomyopathy. While undergoing treatment, Travis suffered congestive heart failure and a stroke. The stroke affected the left side of Travis's brain, impacting movement on the right side of his body. Travis was placed on life support after the infection caused his lungs to collapse, and was declared to have a one percent chance of survival. The infection, subsequent stroke, and three separate bouts of pneumonia led to Travis undergoing three tracheostomies and two brain surgeries. Travis also suffered aphasia and lost the ability to speak and sing, while also suffering vision problems. These issues were mitigated through years of therapy with Davis, to whom he was engaged at the time. By November 2014, he was recovering, could walk short distances without assistance, and was re-learning to write and play guitar, according to Davis.

While the stroke removed most of Travis's ability to sing, he has made sporadic onstage appearances to perform in limited capacity. In 2015, Travis made a guest appearance at the Academy of Country Music awards ceremony, one of his first public appearances after his stroke, where Lee Brice paid tribute to him by singing "Forever and Ever, Amen". Travis sang "Amazing Grace" in March 2016 at an induction ceremony into the Country Music Hall of Fame, where Davis accompanied him. Despite this, Travis's speech remained limited when he was interviewed by The Tennessean in 2017, and he remained largely reliant on a wheelchair. He appeared onstage with singer Michael Ray during a cover performance of "Forever and Ever, Amen" in June 2017, to which Travis contributed the final "Amen." He did the same during his 60th birthday party, hosted by the Grand Ole Opry on May 4, 2019.

Awards
Travis has won seven Grammy Awards, six CMA Awards, and eleven ACM awards.

Discography

 * Studio albums

 * Storms of Life (1986)
 * Always & Forever (1987)
 * Old 8×10 (1988)
 * No Holdin' Back (1989)
 * An Old Time Christmas (1989)
 * Heroes & Friends (1990)
 * High Lonesome (1991)
 * Wind in the Wire (1993)
 * This Is Me (1994)
 * Full Circle (1996)
 * You and You Alone (1998)
 * A Man Ain't Made of Stone (1999)
 * Inspirational Journey (2000)
 * Rise and Shine (2002)
 * Worship & Faith (2003)
 * Passing Through (2004)
 * Glory Train: Songs of Faith, Worship, and Praise (2005)
 * Songs of the Season (2007)
 * Around the Bend (2008)
 * Anniversary Celebration (2011)
 * Influence Vol. 1: The Man I Am (2013)
 * Influence Vol. 2: The Man I Am (2014)
 * Precious Memories (Worship & Faith) (2020)

title: Randy Travis


text:
Junior Brown

Jamieson "Junior" Brown (born June 12, 1952) is an American country guitarist and singer. He has released twelve studio albums in his career, and has charted twice on the Billboard country singles charts. Brown's signature instrument is the "guit-steel" double neck guitar, a hybrid of electric guitar and lap steel guitar.

Life and career
Brown was born in Cottonwood, Arizona; at an early age his family moved to Kirksville, Indiana. He first learned to play piano from his father (Samuel Emmons Brown Jr.) "before I could talk". His music career began in the 1960s, and he worked through that decade and the next singing and playing pedal steel and guitar for groups such as The Last Mile Ramblers, Dusty Drapes and the Dusters, Billy Spears and Asleep at the Wheel while developing his guitar skills. In the early 1980s, he appeared on stage with Rank and File as the replacement for Alejandro Escovedo. However, he did not feature on any recordings by that band.

By the mid-1980s, Brown was teaching guitar at the Hank Thompson School of Country Music at Rogers State University, in Claremore, Oklahoma.

In 1985, Brown created a new type of double-neck guitar, with some assistance from Michael Stevens. Brown called the instrument his "guit-steel". When performing, Brown plays the guitar by standing behind it, while it rests on a small music stand. The top neck on the guit-steel is a traditional six-string guitar, while the lower neck is a full-size lap steel guitar for slide playing. Brown has two guit-steels for recording and live work. The original instrument, dubbed "Old Yeller", has as its standard six-string guitar portion the neck and pickups from Brown's previous stage guitar, a Fender Bullet. The second guit-steel, named "Big Red", has a neck laser-copied from the Bullet neck; but in addition to electric guitar pickups, both the standard and lap-steel necks use identical Sho-Bud lap-steel pickups. There is a pocket in the upper bout of the guitar to hold the slide bar when it is not in use. Brown also commissioned a "pedal guit-steel" which adds pedals to the instrument for more musical control. Brown has stated that the invention of the guit-steel was always a matter of convenience so that he could play both lap steel and lead guitar during live performances and not directly motivated by a desire to be a "one man band".

Brown quickly became a local success in Austin, Texas, as the house band at the Continental Club. His debut album was 12 Shades of Brown (1990), released by the British Demon Records; it was re-released in 1993 on Curb Records in the United States, followed by Guit with It. In 1996, Brown released Semi Crazy, and followed it with Long Walk Back (1998).

In 1996, Brown was featured on the Beach Boys' now out-of-print album Stars and Stripes Vol. 1 performing a cover of their 1962 hit "409". The song features Brown playing guitar and singing lead with the Beach Boys singing harmonies and backing vocals.

Brown appeared in the music video for "Honky Tonk Song" by George Jones in 1996 and also won the CMA Country Music Video of the Year award that year for his video, "My Wife Thinks You're Dead", which featured 6-foot-7-inch Gwendolyn Gillingham. Brown played a cameo part in "Drive", the second episode of season six of The X-Files. Brown's music has been showcased on various television series and movie soundtracks, including Me, Myself & Irene, SpongeBob SquarePants and the 2005 Dukes of Hazzard remake, in which he also played the narrator.

Although Brown plays such neotraditional country styles as honky-tonk, Western swing, etc., some of his performances will finish with some blues and Tex-Mex tunes playing as well as surf rock instrumentals.

Beginning in August 2006, Brown joined Webb Wilder's tour of American minor league baseball stadiums. He reprised his role in an episode ("World of Hurt, BC") of Adult Swim's Xavier: Renegade Angel created by rock band PFFR. In April 2008, Brown shot three pilot episodes of a country music program modeled after programs from the early 1960s, in which Brown will play with a house band as well as guests as host of the show. On October 12, 2012, Brown released the EP Volume 10, containing six new songs.

AMC previewed the video of his new song "Better Call Saul", on October 5, 2014. On May 24, 2018, Brown released his 11th album, Deep in the Heart Of Me.

On May 27, 2020, Rolling Stone magazine's listing of 50 Country Albums Every Rock Fan Should Own, honored Brown’s US released album, 12 Shades of Brown (Curb Records, 1993).

In May 2020, Brown and his wife began hosting a series of live Facebook concerts under the name, "The Junior & Tanya Rae Brown Show".

Grammy Awards

 * 1996
 * Junior High
 * Best Country Album
 * rowspan=3 Nominated
 * rowspan=2| 1997
 * rowspan=2| "My Wife Thinks You're Dead"
 * Best Male Country Vocal Performance
 * Best Country Song
 * }
 * Best Country Song
 * }
 * }

Academy of Country Music Awards

 * 1996
 * "My Wife Thinks You're Dead"
 * Video of the Year
 * Nominated
 * }
 * }

Country Music Association Awards

 * 1996
 * "My Wife Thinks You're Dead"
 * Video of the Year
 * Won
 * }
 * }

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Junior Brown


text:
Black people and early Mormonism

Early Mormonism had a range of doctrines related to race with regards to Black people of African descent. References to Black people, their social condition during the 19th and 20th centuries, and their spiritual place in Western Christianity as well as in Mormon scripture were complicated.

From the beginning, Black people have been members of Mormon congregations and Mormon congregations have always been interracial. When the Mormons migrated to Missouri, they encountered the pro-slavery sentiments of their neighbors. Joseph Smith upheld the laws regarding Black enslavement, and affirmed the curse of Ham as placing his descendants into slavery, "to the shame and confusion of all who have cried out against the South." After the Mormons were expelled from Missouri, Smith took an increasingly strong anti-slavery position, and several Black men were ordained to the LDS priesthood.

New York era (1820s and early 1830s)
The first reference to dark skin as a curse and mark from God in Latter Day Saint writings can be found in the Book of Mormon, published in 1830. It refers to a group of people called the Lamanites and states that when they rebelled against God they were cursed with "a skin of blackness".

The mark of blackness was placed upon the Lamanites so the Nephites "might not mix and believe in incorrect traditions which would prove their destruction". The Book of Mormon records the Lord as forbidding miscegenation between Lamanites and Nephites and saying they were to stay "separated from thee and thy seed [Nephites], from this time henceforth and forever, except they repent of their wickedness and turn to me that I may have mercy upon them".

However, states: "[The Lord] inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come, black and white, bond and free, male and female...and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile." Although the Lamanites are labelled as wicked, they actually became more righteous than the Nephites as time passed.

Throughout the Book of Mormon narrative, several groups of Lamanites did repent and lose the curse. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies or Ammonites "open[ed] a correspondence with them [Nephites], and the curse of God did no more follow them". There is no reference to their skin color being changed. Later, the Book of Mormon records that an additional group of Lamanites converted and that "their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites… and they were numbered among the Nephites, and were called Nephites".

The curse was also put on others who rebelled. One group of Nephites, called Amlicites "had come out in open rebellion against God; therefore it was expedient that the curse should fall upon them". The Amlicites then put a mark upon themselves. At this point, the author stops the narrative to say "I would that ye should see that they brought upon themselves the curse; and even so doth every man that is cursed bring upon himself his own condemnation." Eventually, the Lamanites "had become, the more part of them, a righteous people, insomuch that their righteousness did exceed that of the Nephites, because of their firmness and their steadiness in the faith."

The Book of Mormon did not countenance any form of curse-based discrimination. It stated that the Lord "denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile". . In fact, prejudice against people of dark skin was condemned more than once, as in this example: O my brethren, I fear that unless ye shall repent of your sins that their skins will be whiter than yours, when ye shall be brought with them before the throne of God. Wherefore, a commandment I give unto you, which is the word of God, that ye revile no more against them because of the darkness of their skins; neither shall ye revile against them because of their filthiness....

Missouri era (early 1830s to 1838)
In the summer of 1833 W. W. Phelps published an article in the church's newspaper, seeming to invite free Black people into the state to become Mormons, and reflecting "in connection with the wonderful events of this age, much is doing towards abolishing slavery, and colonizing the blacks, in Africa." Outrage followed Phelps' comments, (Roberts [1930] 1965, p. 378.) and he was forced to reverse his position, which he claimed was "misunderstood", but this reversal did not end the controversy, and the Mormons were violently expelled from Jackson County, Missouri five months later in December 1833.

In 1835, the Church issued an official statement indicating that because the United States government allowed Black enslavement, the Church would not "interfere with bond-servants, neither preach the gospel to, nor baptize them contrary to the will and wish of their masters, nor meddle with or influence them in the least to cause them to be dissatisfied with their situations in this life, thereby jeopardizing the lives of men." (D&C ).

On February 6, 1835, an assistant president of the church, W. W. Phelps, wrote a letter theorizing that the curse of Cain survived the deluge by passing through the wife of Ham, son of Noah, who according to Phelps was a descendant of Cain. (Messenger and Advocate 1:82) In addition, Phelps introduced the idea of a third curse upon Ham himself for "marrying a black wife". (Messenger and Advocate 1:82) This Black wife, according to Phelps, was not just a descendant of Cain, but one of the pre-flood "people of Canaan", not directly related to the Biblical Canaanites after the flood.

In 1836, the rules established by the church for governing assemblies in the Kirtland Temple included attendees who were "bond or free, black or white." (History of the Church, Vol. 2, Ch. 26, p. 368)

Writing for the Messenger and Advocate newspaper on the subject of Black enslavement, Joseph Smith states:

"After having expressed myself so freely upon this subject, I do not doubt but those who have been forward in raising their voice against the South, will cry out against me as being uncharitable, unfeeling and unkind-wholly unacquainted with the gospel of Christ.

It is my privilege then, to name certain passages from the bible, and examine the teachings of the ancients upon this nature, as the fact is incontrovertible, that the first mention we have of slavery is found in the holy bible, pronounced by a man who was perfect in his generation and walked with God.

And so far from that prediction's being averse from the mind of God it remains as a lasting monument of the decree of Jehovah, to the shame and confusion of all who have cried out against the South, in consequence of their holding the sons of Ham in servitude!

"And he said cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant. —"

Trace the history of the world from this notable event down to this day, and you will find the fulfillment of this singular prophecy. What could have been the design of the Almighty in this wonderful occurrence is not for me to say; but I can say that the curse is not yet taken off the sons of Canaan, neither will be until it is affected by as great power as caused it to come; and the people who interfere the least with the decrees and purposes of God in this matter, will come under the least condemnation before him; and those who are determined to pursue a course which shows an opposition and a feverish restlessness against the designs of the Lord, will learn, when perhaps it is too late for their own good, that God can do his own work without the aid of those who are not dictate by his counsel."

- Joseph Smith, Messenger and Advocate Vol. II, No. 7, April 1836, p. 290; History of the Church, Vol. 2, Ch. 30, pp. 436–40.

In April 1836, Smith said: "Thinking, perhaps, that the sound might go out, that "an abolitionist" had held forth several times to this community, and that the public feeling was not aroused to create mobs or disturbances, leaving the impression that all he said was concurred in, and received as gospel and the word of salvation. I am happy to say, that no violence or breach of the public peace was attempted, so far from this, that all except a very few, attended to their own avocations and left the gentleman to hold forth his own arguments to nearly naked walls."

- Messenger and Advocate Volume 2, Number 7, pg. 290

In 1836, Warren Parrish (Smith's secretary) wrote regarding the sentiments of the people of Kirtland: "Not long since a gentleman of the Presbyterian faith came to this town (Kirtland) and proposed to lecture upon the abolition question. Knowing that there was a large branch of the church of Latter Day Saints in this place, who, as a people, are liberal in our sentiments; he no doubt anticipated great success in establishing his doctrine among us. But in this he was mistaken. The doctrine of Christ and the systems of men are at issue and consequently will not harmonize together."

- Messenger and Advocate Volume 2, Number 7

The Church never denied membership based on race (although enslaved Black people had to have their enslaver's permission to be baptized), and several Black men were ordained to the priesthood during Joseph Smith's lifetime. The first known Black Latter-day Saint was "Black Pete", who joined the Church in Kirtland, Ohio, and there is evidence that he held the priesthood. Other African Americans, including Elijah Abel in 1832, Joseph T. Ball in 1835 or 1836 (who also presided over the Boston Branch from 1844–1845), and Walker Lewis in 1843 (and probably his son, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis), were ordained to the priesthood during Smith's lifetime. William McCary was ordained in Nauvoo in 1846 by Apostle Orson Hyde. Two of the descendants of Elijah Abel were also ordained Elders, and two other Black men, Samuel Chambers and Edward Leggroan, were ordained Deacons.

Early Black members in the Church were admitted to the temple in Kirtland, Ohio, where Elijah Abel received the ritual of washing and anointing (see Journal of Zebedee Coltrin ). Abel also participated in at least two baptisms for the dead in Nauvoo, Illinois, as did Elder Joseph T. Ball.

Nauvoo era prior to Smith's death (1838 to 1844)
In 1838, Joseph Smith had the following conversation: "Elder Hyde inquired about the situation of the negro. I replied, they came into the world slaves mentally and physically. Change their situation with the whites, and they would be like them. They have souls, and are subjects of salvation. Go into Cincinnati or any city, and find an educated negro, who rides in his carriage, and you will see a man who has risen by the powers of his own mind to his exalted state of respectability. The slaves in Washington are more refined than many in high places, and the black boys will take the shine off many of those they brush and wait on. Elder Hyde remarked, "Put them on the level, and they will rise above me." I replied, if I raised you to be my equal, and then attempted to oppress you, would you not be indignant? […] Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization."

- History of the Church, Volume 5, p. 216

In 1838, and throughout the 19th century the term "species" was borrowed and commonly used to imply that the Black population was inferior. The biological use of the term species was first defined in 1686.

In 1838, Joseph Smith answered the following question while en route from Kirtland to Missouri, as follows: "Are the Mormons abolitionists? No ... we do not believe in setting the Negroes free." (Smith 1977, p. 120)

By 1839 there were about a dozen Black members in the Church. Nauvoo, Illinois was reported to have 22 Black members, including free and enslaved individuals, between 1839–1843 (Late Persecution of the Church of Latter-day Saints, 1840).

"In the evening debated with John C. Bennett and others to show that the Indians have greater cause to complain of the treatment of the whites, than the negroes or sons of Cain"

- History of the Church 4:501.

Beginning in 1842, Smith made known his increasingly strong anti-slavery position. In March 1842, he began studying some abolitionist literature, and stated, "it makes my blood boil within me to reflect upon the injustice, cruelty, and oppression of the rulers of the people. When will these things cease to be, and the Constitution and the laws again bear rule?" (History of the Church, 4:544).

On February 7, 1844, Joseph Smith wrote his views as a candidate for president of the United States. The anti-slavery plank of his platform called for a gradual end to Black enslavement by the year 1850. His plan called for the government to buy the freedom of enslaved persons using money from the sale of public lands.

"My cogitations, like Daniel's have for a long time troubled me, when I viewed the condition of men throughout the world, and more especially in this boasted realm, where the Declaration of Independence "holds these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" but at the same time some two or three millions of people are held as slaves for life, because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours."

- History of the Church, Vol.6, Ch.8, pp. 197–198

Elijah Abel
Although Joseph Smith is not known to have made any statements regarding Black men and the priesthood, he was aware of the ordination of at least one Black man to the office of elder. Elijah Abel was ordained on 3 March 1836 by Zebedee Coltrin. Six months later, he was ordained to the office of seventy and was called to serve in the Third Quorum of the Seventy. Abel served his first mission for the church to New York and Upper Canada. In 1836, he moved from Kirtland to Nauvoo, Illinois, where he participated in the temple ordinance of baptism for the dead. In 1843, a traveling high council visited Cincinnati, where Abel lived, but refused to recognize Abel for the sake of public appearance and called him to his second mission to the "colored population" of Cincinnati.

Abel joined the other Latter-day Saints in Utah Territory in 1853. By then, Brigham Young had formalized church's policies against Black people. However, no attempt was made to remove Abel's priesthood or drop him from the Third Quorum of the Seventy. He remained active in the Quorum until his death.

Green Flake
Born in 1829, Green Flake was enslaved by James Madison Flake, converted to the LDS Church, and was baptized at the age of 16 in 1844. He accompanied the Flake family to Nauvoo, Illinois. Green continued to be held as a slave, but was a member of the church throughout his life. From family diaries and the memory of a grandson, it is believed that it was Green who drove the carriage and team that brought President Brigham Young into the Salt Lake Valley. Brigham Young ended Flake's enslavement in 1854.

Walker Lewis
Walker Lewis was another free Black man who held the Mormon priesthood prior to the death of Joseph Smith. A prominent radical abolitionist, Episcopalian, and Most Worshipful Grand Master of Freemasonry from Lowell and Boston, Massachusetts, Lewis became a Latter Day Saint about 1842. In the summer of 1843, he was ordained an elder in the Melchizedek priesthood. His son, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, also joined the Latter Day Saints about the same time, and Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier heard young Enoch preaching in Lowell just after the death of Joseph Smith in July or August 1844. It has been speculated that Enoch led Young to instigate the ban against Black men holding Mormon priesthood when Enoch L. Lewis married a white Mormon woman, Mary Matilda Webster, in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 18, 1846. On December 3, 1847, Young told the Quorum of the Twelve at Winter Quarters that "if they [Enoch and Matilda] were far away from the Gentiles they wod. [would] all be killed – when they mingle seed it is death to all." (Quorum of the Twelve Minutes, December 3, 1847, pp. 6–7, LDS Archives.)

title: Black people and early Mormonism


text:
Talk:Foundations of mathematics

Foundations and philosophy of mathematics
The recently-added text has the bias that a foundation of mathematics is actually possible. Before that the text was balanced and ended with 'the matter remains controversial' without advocating any particular approach. The subject matter after that line belongs in philosophy of mathematics under whatever old school (or new school) believes in it.

The majority of modern mathematicians seem to believe that foundations are either non-existent or unnecessary. They accept neither the positions of the older schools, nor do they accept the cognitive or social foundations theories. Hilary Putnam pointed out that one can accept a sort of weak realism without accepting any form of Platonism tied to Plato's ontology <-- apologies for the lousy condition of that article, it was written by a local sacred idiot.

Article now more complete. Papers at end are critically important to this field and deserve summary treatment as articles, each of them. Particularly as there are fools out there who think realist=Platonist which is just wrong. Calling Putnam in particular a Platonist would piss him off to no end, dude.

Foundations search itself may be scientism. Is that view too contoversial?

 * Scientism is defined on that page as:

 * Scientism is the acceptance of scientific theory and scientific methods as applicable in all fields of inquiry, including morality.

 * Personally I don't see the connection between a search for a Foundation for Mathematics, and say, morality; so I would call it controversial. Chas zzz brown 21:16 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)
 * Fine, we'll leave it out. Various arguments about this connection are in Talk:Philosophy_of_mathematic, which I notice you've found, so discuss it there.

-

Hilary Putnam raised an extremely important point in What Is Mathematical Truth? - which is, that you must consider foundations of mathematics as a quite separate issue from an ontology, which most philosophy of mathematics theories fail to do, as they confuse the two quite hopelessly. Specifically, Putnam said he was a realist but not a Platonist, and was clear that one could believe that mathematical ideas were 'real' without believing in any aspect of Plato's ontology. What he meant was foundation ontology or cosmology it seems, but that aspect or usage of an ontology is not in the ontology article due to it being authored by, as the above claims, a local sacred idiot. According to the existing article there, a foundation ontology is just some kind of comp sci thing, and cosmology is only about physics and religion.

At some point this sacred idiocy must be challenged and Putnam's disctinction accepted and noted in either or both of the ontology and philosophy of mathematics articles, plus here in foundations of mathematics. As it stands, this article is trapped in about 1980 and those are trapped in about 1959, without even acknowledging Wigner's points. This is a bit confusing for anyone who actually knows the topic, and may discourage intelligent contributors, leaving the articles sadly in the hands of local sacred idiots.

Thank you Axel. Chas zzz brown 18:00 Feb 10, 2003 (UTC)

Anyone, a mathematician especially, who appreciates the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” and the “unreasonable ineffectiveness of philosophy" to scientific endeavors must recognize the dangers of letting "philosophy of math" ride roughshod over "foundations of math" and as a last line of defense, of letting "philosophy and foundations of math" ride roughshod over proper pure and applied maths.

Just look at the talk page for "philosophy of math"! What a mess. Note that some of these people actually believe the destiny of science can be mastered thru verbose semantics, concepts, schema, arguments, etc. The last time I looked, the language of science was still written in mathematics. Fortunately, bullshit had not yet taken over in the math journals.

Specialists in foundations and/or philosophy of math often over-estimate the importance of their work to those in other specialties. In fact, few mathematicians are typically concerned on a daily, working basis over logicism, formalism or any other philosophical position. Instead, their primary concern is that the mathematical enterprise as a whole always remains productive ... as evident by the work they are doing at the moment.

Typically, they see this as insured by remaining open-minded, practical and busy; as potentially threatened by becoming overly-ideological, fanatically reductionistic or lazy. I do not know of a name for this “philosophical position” but it may be the one most mathematicians adhere to more strongly than any traditional, philosophical position they also favor or agree with (if any).

I think it would be choice to boldly, truthfully publish that the nihilistic and productive "philosophical positions" are by far the most populus amongst modern mathematicians on the "philosophy of math" and "foundations of math" pages. Let the silent majority be heard at last. Let the fanatical minority, steeped with all of their dreaded, formidable philosophical arguments, just go nuts (as usual). We have nothing to fear from these people. Some of them are just "naked emperors". Some of them are qualified mathematicians but with a strange psychological affliction involving philosophy and/or religion.

OmegaMan

A working perspective
This section was moved here from the article. See above for a explanation why. :)

To give an example, in number theory there is a huge body of doctrine, a tiny fraction of which has been developed in a particular axiomatic system, say Peano arithmetic (PA). Most of this work could be developed in PA; as a famous example, the prime number theorem is provable in PRA (Sudac (2001)), a much weaker theory than PA. But the working number theorist is concerned with proving theorems from initial assumptions which are obviously true using proof methods which are obviously correct, not with any particular logical system. In fact, the "crisis"-causing assertions discovered by Gödel are assertions about Diophantine equations, one of the main avenues in number theory. It may or may not be the case that there is a fundamental limit to what humans can understand about numbers (i.e., there may be true number-theoretical principles which cannot be perceived as being true by any human), but Gödel's theorem does not tell us which of these is the case, and we have no way of knowing. It may or may not be that we are required to introduce principles which are not expressible in the language of first order arithmetic in order to decide questions which are (e.g. the consistency of PA), but Gödel's theorem does not tell us which of these is the case, and again we have no way of knowing. It is often asserted that in light of Gödel's theorem one must introduce set-theoretical principles in order to decide certain number theoretical questions, but this assertion is unjustified. Gödel's theorem does not put any such constraints on the nature of the principles involved (i.e. the language in which they must be expressed). The attitude of the working number theorist is thus a reasonable one: one does not spend time thinking about such things, as there is simply no way to know. Instead one continues to prove theorems, and true principles which may be outside this or that logical system will be appealed to as required. Such principles will be introduced by people thinking about and solving actual problems, on the front-line. The problems (assuming there is no limit to what humans can understand about numbers) will be solved by people carrying on in the same way as they did before.

Eudoxus
In the section on ancient Greek mathematics, we have the following:
 * The discrepancy between rationals and reals was finally resolved by Eudoxus of Cnidus (408–355 BC), a student of Plato, who reduced the comparison of irrational ratios to comparisons of multiples (rational ratios), thus anticipating the definition of real numbers by Richard Dedekind (1831-1916).

As I understand it from reading Eudoxus of Cnidus, what Eudoxus actually did was define equality of two ratios by way of a logical relation between comparisons of each ratio's components: given integers m and n, a/b = c/d if and only if for all R in {<, =, >}, ma R nb if and only if mc R nd. To use this definition to "reduce comparisons of irrational ratios to comparisons of rational ratios", we would need to choose m and n such that ma, nb, mc and nd are all integers. But this is impossible: if m and ma are integers, a = ma/m is rational, contradicting the assumption that it's irrational. Is the article Eudoxus of Cnidus mistaken in asserting that m and n must be integers? For this reduction to work, they must be allowed to be irrational - and possibly not even numbers, albeit still quantifiable, e.g. physical quantities, such as the lengths of two line segments. Hairy Dude (talk) 01:17, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This reads awkwardly for me, too, though it's important that $m$ and $n$ are integers. From reading Euclid, who uses Eudoxus, the Greeks were secure in constructing any whole number multiple of a given magnitude and in comparing magnitudes, so they could test for $ma R nb$. In modern terms, the condition can be expressed as $a/b R n/m$ iff $c/d R n/m$ (all quantities being positive), which starts looking more like Dedekind by placing $a/b$ and $c/d$ in the same cut. The key steps in both approaches have a lot of similarities, though I'm unsure if they're entirely equivalent, not least because they come from different start points. I wonder if there's an awkwardness in the text from trying to express ancient concepts in modern terms: neither a magnitude nor a ratio in Euclid seems quite the same as a modern Real number. NeilOnWiki (talk) 14:40, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Definitions
Article jumps into talking about "ZF" and "ZFC" without explaining, or linking to, a definition of either. --Cholten99 (talk) 00:31, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I've added definitions before the More paradoxes list — which seems to be about more general metamathematical results rather than paradoxes, so perhaps ought to be retitled. The article doesn't seem to include a section on set theory (where for example the Axiom of Choice could be explained more fully), which seems a strange omission in an article on foundations. NeilOnWiki (talk) 17:48, 30 May 2021 (UTC)

Ordinal Analysis and Stronger Arithmetics
Concerning the revision of the ordinal analytic perspective, the statment was meant as a closing view on the state of the crisis which is as yet unresolved; as no concensus exists on the foundational theory of mathematics in its many variations. It was not meant to be presenting a specific theory, rather pointing the reader in the direction where the foundations of mathematics may explore, in order to provide a more complete and consistent resolution to the modern crisis. Where ZFC is not unilaterally accepted as a foundation, and as it is well known to be a lacking basis for things such as category theories of sets, or proper classes, more infinitary logic systems such as the Tarski-Grothendieck formalism and its universe provide stronger ground for foundational mathematics. Not to mention theories which may have higher ordinals. Consider restoring the paragraph. 79.6.244.66 (talk) 11:29, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The fact that the crisis is unresolved is your opinion, and, among mathematicians, there is a consensus on the contrary. "Pointing the reader in the direction where the foundations of mathematics may explore" is considered as WP:original research, and is forbidded, unless some recognized mathematician has asserted that this direction is worth to explore; in such a case, the opinion must be explicitely attributed its author, with an explicit quotation. Otherwise, Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, and the directions of research that are worth to explore have not their place here, at least when they have not yet been succesful. D.Lazard (talk) 12:45, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The article itself makes the case that the crisis is only partially resolved, which is a known fact to any mathematician or logician, working in category or set theory and formal systems. The statement was made in order for lay and professional readers to explore the subject further on the wiki (which is no crystal balling but the very function of the platform), along lines of well established theories of higher order arithmetic; a subject which is fundamentally seminal to this article. There is no personal bias to promote any theory or particular speculation, but a statement made to connect further personal research on wikipedia for the reader; perhaps requiring rephrasing to this end. Possibly there may be bias for unregistered editing, which is understandable considering the plethora of crackpots lurking around fundamental scientific articles; not to cast any stones. The attempt was to enrich the explanation of a complicated topic. And, provide further reading for deep foundational subjects. If this seems misplaced, please provide some professional perspective on the relation of hilbert's program with godel's incompleteness theorems in light of inaccessible cardinals and their universes. Because ordinal analysis and its higher order arithmetics make some fundamental questions as to the foundations of mathematics. 5.90.127.84 (talk) 13:21, 13 July 2021 (UTC)
 * If one wishes to delete edits without proper cause; thereby controlling the state of an article, the least to do is to respond in its discussion. This type of behavior discouages people from investing time, and contributing to articles that need expansion or quality elevation. Especially, when they are specialists in the field, and wish to contribute freely to the beauty that is wikipedia. The point remains, this article needs a closing statement which elaborates on the current state of foundations, and higher order theories of arithmetic beyond the current controversial standard of ZFC. 79.6.244.66 (talk) 09:09, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * The success and "beauty" of Wikipedia result from its rules and its foundational policies. So, deleting edits that do not respect these policies is definitely a proper cause of deletion. The policies that are involved here are linked above. About a "possible closing statement": As there is no consensus on the content of such a closing statement, the Wikipedia policy is clear: either this statement does not belong to Wikipedia, or the different opinions are stated with clear attributions. The discussion between them does not belong to Wikipedia. D.Lazard (talk) 10:07, 14 July 2021 (UTC)
 * Well we seem to be at a conceptual impass. Providing a general perspective on the continuation of research is vital to this article, as it already suffers from fractured tone and conflicting conclusions. I do not see how the added content is within violation of policies, as its intent is none of the aforementioned. But in the end we must agree to disagree. Unfortunate. Perhaps someone can eventualy make a synthesis of these perspectives, and provide clarity to the closing of this article. My attempt was to point to deeper research, which in mathematics, is the whole point. 79.6.244.66 (talk) 10:41, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Here from WP:3O. I guess you are talking about this edit. I havent seen a reference at the end of the addition, so unless there is a WP:Reliable Source, there is no real case for adding this sentence. (not watching, please ) Cinadon36 14:55, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Foundations of mathematics