Terri Clark

Terri Clark became something of a country music sensation in 1995 with the release of her debut platinum album, entitled Terri Clark. The first single, "Better Things to Do" was a number-one hit on the country charts. In the summer of 1996, she was voted Star of Tomorrow by the TNN (The Nashville Network)/Music City News Awards, a fan- voted honor. She was also nominated by the Country Music Association for its prestigious Horizon Award. Billboard magazine recognized her achievement by awarding her Top New Female Country Artists of 1995. In her native Canada, the awards were even higher with the Canadian Country Music Association awarding her Album of the Year, Song of the Year and the Vista Rising Star Award for 1996.

Clark was born in Montr�al, Qu�bec on August 5, 1968 to Les Samson and Linda Clark. As a child, the family moved from Montr�al to the heartland of Canada, the prairie province of Alberta. She was educated in the public schools of Medicine, Alberta and was exposed from a very early age to country music. Her grandparents had been country music performers and both her parents were musical. Clark herself began playing guitar at the age of nine. Throughout her childhood she was thrilled by country music and became a huge fan of The Judds, Reba McEntire and other big country stars. All her life, she wanted to be a country music performer, she told Victoria Forrest of American Country magazine. "When I was growing up, that is all I talked about. I slept, ate and breathed country music. I always loved the sounds from Nashville and couldn't have imagined doing anything else with my life." Succumbing to her daughter's drive, in 1987, her mother brought her to Nashville, country music's Mecca, where the 18- year old hoped to make a career. The chances of it making it in Nashville, of course, were extremely slim.

Still, Clark and her mother had faith that Terri had what it would take to make it. Incredibly, soon after their arrival, Terri got a job performing at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge after taking the stage one day while the regular performer was on break. She told the story for her record company's promotional department: "I was fresh from the prairie. We went into Tootsie's and there was a guy playing for tips. I boldly went up and asked him if I could go on during his break; and I started singing. I did these impersonations of John Conlee and John Anderson and George Jones and people started filtering in from the street. By the time I got ready to leave, the place was full. They hired me."

After securing a job and a place to live, Clark was left on her own by her mother who had to return to Alberta. She took part-time jobs and continued singing and writing music. She worked for a while in a boot store and waited tables at all sorts of restaurants, including a Chinese restaurant where one of her jobs was to rub down the steamed rice to keep it from getting too sticky. In addition to singing at Tootsie's, she sang at Gilley's and at the Wax Museum. While critics and fans often consider that she was something of an overnight sensation -- since her very first single was a hit -- the truth is she worked long and hard at her craft and put in her time knocking on doors trying to get noticed. She spent eight years living on the edge of the Nashville country music scene before catching the attention of Luke Lewis, president of Mercury Records, which signed her in 1994.

Clark described the ordeal of trying to get "discovered" for an interview in Country Song Roundup in 1996. She said that all her running around for all those years in Nashville gave her a good sense of what is and what isn't a hit. She also said that she often wondered if she shouldn't just abandon her dreams and try to put together a life for herself beyond country music. "I wondered if I was ever going to have a normal life. 'Am I just going to keep chasing after my dream, or am I going to settle down, buy a house and raise a family like a normal person?'" Her perseverance, however, won out and she was granted a performance before Lewis. Having been given the opportunity to perform before the president of one the largest labels in the country, Clark selected a few of her favorite compositions, performing "Was There a Girl on Your Boys' Night Out?" and "The Inside Story" among others.

Terri Clark the album was completed in 1995 and contains 12 cuts, all but one of which were written by Clark, in collaboration. These include: "If I Were You" (first number-one hit), "Catch-22," "Is Fort Worth Worth It?" "When Boy Meets Girl," (second number one) Tyin' A Heart to a Tumbleweed," "When We Had it Bad," "Better Things to Do,"(third number one) "Suddenly Single," "Flowers After the Fact," "The Inside Story," "Was There a Girl on Your Boys' Night Out?" and "Something You Should've Said." Almost immediately after its release, the praise started piling up. In 1996, she went on the road, opening up for country music superstar George Strait and drawing quite a bit of attention herself.

In the fall of 1996, Clark released her second album, which has received largely positive reviews. The album contains eleven songs, eight of which Clark wrote or co-wrote. These include: "Emotional Girl," "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me," "Just the Same," "Something in the Water," "Neon Flame," "Any Woman," "Twang Thang," "You do or You Don't," "Keeper of the Flame," "Not What I Wanted to Hear," and "Hold your Horses." Dating back to her pre-record deal years, the Warren Zevon classic "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me" has been something of a standard for Clark, and, as such, it was the first single from her sophomore effort. It piqued at number five on the Billboard charts. Overall, Terri Clark has shown Nashville and country fans that she intends to stick around.