Clay Walker - Biography

Biography

Ernest Clayton Walker Jr. was born on August 19, 1969 in Beaumont, Texas to Ernest and Danna Walker. The oldest of five children, Walker lived in Vidor with his father, who gave him a guitar when he was nine years old. Walker began entering talent competitions at age fifteen. After leaving his shift as nighttime desk clerk at a Super 8 Motel in his teenage years, Walker stopped at a local radio station to deliver a tape of a song that he had written. Although the morning disc jockey told him that the station's policies prohibited playing self-submitted tapes, he played Walker's song and said that it was "too good to pass up."

After graduating from Vidor High School in 1987, Walker began working at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company plant. At age nineteen, he also began touring as a musician in the state of Texas, playing at various local clubs and eventually finding work as the house singer at a bar in Beaumont called the Neon Armadillo. In November 1992, Walker was discovered by James Stroud, a record producer who was also the president of Warner Music Group subsidiary Giant Records. Walker signed to Giant late in the year.