Chris LeDoux
b. 2 October 1948, Biloxi, Mississippi, USA. LeDoux's father was an airforce pilot who was posted to various parts of the USA. His grandfather, who had served in the US cavalry and fought against Pancho Villa, encouraged LeDoux to ride horses on his Wyoming farm. LeDoux attended high school at Cheyenne, Wyoming and, whilst still at school, he twice won the state's bareback title. In 1967, after graduating, he won a rodeo scholarship and received a national title in his third year. In 1976, he became the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association's world champion in bareback riding. 
LeDoux has been playing guitar and harmonica and writing songs since his teens, and he used his musical ability as a means of paying his way from one rodeo to another. Since 1971, he has been recording songs about ‘real cowboys’, although his voice would not win world championships and he has never had a substantial US country hit. His albums combine his own compositions about rodeo life with old and new cowboy songs. He describes his music as ‘a combination of western soul, sagebrush blues, cowboy folk and rodeo rock ‘n’ roll’. For all his tough image, his music has a soft centre (God Must Be A Cowboy At Heart and the narration This Cowboy's Hat), but one of his love songs is titled If You Loved Me, You'd Do It. Charlie Daniels, Johnny Gimble and Janie Frickieare amongst the musicians on his records and Garth Brooks pays tribute to him in Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old). LeDoux lives with his family on a ranch in Wyoming and farms sheep. He is a popular entertainer with his band, Western Underground, particularly on the rodeo circuit. All his albums are released on his own label, American Cowboy Songs, but only RODEO'S SINGING BRONC RIDER has been released in the UK. Garth Brooks’ testimony together with the success of a single, Ridin For A Fall’, brought him to the attention of Capitol Records, who signed LeDoux for new recordings and have reissued his earlier work.