PAT BOONE
Pat Boone
Google Pat Boone - be warned, more than 1.9 million results show up! -
and a word picture of an astonishing, long lasting, still thriving
career in music and entertainment emerges. Singer, actor, TV host,
producer, songwriter, author, motivational speaker, TV pitchman, radio
personality, record company head, TV station owner, sports team owner,
family man, humanitarian, a man unafraid to air his views. A lot of Pat
Boones from which to pick and choose.A lot of Pat Boones to go around.
Right now, Boone - the #10 all time top recording artist, according to
music industry bible, Billboard - is the Lion in Winter, five decades of
recording history behind him and a busy future ahead.
Boone runs his own record company, The Gold Label, designed for
legendary artists of a certain age and certifiable talent (all with
million-selling gold records to their credit). "It's a senior tour for
singers," he jokes. "But there is a qualification: they have to be able
to sell records." So far Glen Campbell, Jack Jones, Roger Williams,
Patti Page, Cleo Laine, Sha Na Na and others (as well as Boone himself)
have lived up to the Founder's Maxim. More than 30 Gold Record albums
have been released to date.
Boone has involved himself in a couple of personal projects: "For My
Country," a musical acknowledgment to the National Guard that Boone
wrote himself, and regards as a follow-up to his Pledge of Allegiance
pitch, "Under God," recorded a couple of years ago, which became Boone's
61st hit record. Tuned to current events, close to Boone's heart and
views, both stirred up debate as well as sales. "It's not just liberals
who can stir things up through recordings," he says.
An updated pictorial autobiography, "Pat Boone's America 50 Years"
has joined the line of more than a dozen autobiographical and
motivational books. He became a book author for the first time, writing
the still-in-print "Twixt Twelve And Twenty," in 1958 as a Teen Idol,
himself barely out of his own teens. His newest book venture, co-written
with Cord Cooper, is "Questions About God And the Answers That Could
Change Your life". This book addresses one of today's hottest topics,
and is packed with facts that will challenge readers' thinking.