Country legends Alabama to be celebrated with CMT 'Giants' special

CMT's popular "GIANTS" series returns for the seventh time in two decades to honor chart-topping hall-of-fame country band Alabama -- via a star-studded program recently recorded at Belmont University's Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Nashville.

The program is expected to air in the fall.

Jeff Cook, Teddy Gentry and Randy Owen -- a trio of musical cousins -- successfully transported the vibe of The Beatles from Liverpool and The Eagles from Hotel California 3,000 miles east to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, adding a stop through Atlanta's influential soulful Southern rock scene to the mix.

However, the band is best regarded for being born in Fort Payne, Alabama -- a town of 8,000 people west of Lookout Mountain and an hour south of Chattanooga, Tennessee --and loving the bluegrass and folk-tinged "Mountain Music" that their grandparents were fond of playing.

Twenty-one consecutive No. 1 hits between 1980 and 1987 propelled Alabama from being one of many acts breaking out of the genre's post-countrypolitan and traditional eras to leading the genre toward rock and pop supremacy.

Songs like "Song of the South," "I'm In A Hurry," "Cheap Seats" and "My Home's In Alabama" have, over time, evolved into fundamental pieces of country music's timeless catalog of hits.

Blake Shelton partners with Steve Wariner, Pam Tillis pairs with Lorrie Morgan, plus Brad Paisley, Jamey Johnson, Jason Aldean, Little Big Town, Old Dominion, Riley Green, and Sam Hunt -- all who count Alabama's five decades of influence on country music and country's mark on modern popular culture as key to their work -- perform on the two-hour special.

Alabama native and four-time heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield, plus Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan, Martina McBride, Vince Gill and more, appear both in-person and virtually to, as a press statement notes, "share personal stories reflecting on Alabama's forever impact on music, blended alongside rare photos, performance footage and interviews from the vault."

Since 2006, the CMT GIANTS franchise has celebrated the careers of legendary country artists including Reba McEntire (2006), Hank Williams, Jr. (2007), Alan Jackson (2008), Kenny Rogers (2020), Charley Pride (2021) and Vince Gill (2022).

In Nov. 2022, Cook, aged 73, died after battling Parkinson's disease, a progressive disorder of the nervous system that affects movement and causes tremors, for a decade.

In 2017, country music historian Robert K. Oermann noted that Alabama's ability to expand country's expectations past solo artistry combined with the work that Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Willie Nelson did for "amassing a youth audience for the genre."

"[Alabama] showed a kid in a t-shirt that country music could be rock, could be real, could be someone who looked like me," stated Kenny Chesney at the time of Cook's passing.

2023 saw Gentry and Owen called to CMA Fest's Nissan Stadium stage to receive the Country Music Association's Pinnacle Award, which "recognizes a country artist who has undeniably redefined the pinnacle of success in the genre by achieving prominence through concert performances, consumption numbers, record sales, and/or other significant industry achievements at levels unique for country music."

At the June 2023 event, Aldean called Alabama "The Beatles of country music."

Encouraged by Cook to soldier on, Alabama maintains a limited touring schedule.

For more information on the band, visit http://www.thealabamaband.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Country legends Alabama to be celebrated with CMT 'Giants' special