Family
While his list of accolades runs longer than a Louisiana summer, Kennedy always points to his family when asked how and why he got into music when he did. The oldest of the three Kennedy boys, he’s not the only one who followed in his parents’ footsteps. Both his brothers, Shelby and Bryan, have written No. 1 hits as well, for Reba McEntire and Garth Brooks respectively, each establishing himself in the industry through his own talents and pursuits.
In a letter to his three boys dated March 1, 2011, Gordon’s father, Jerry Kennedy, wrote: “Our family has kind of an anniversary today. Fifty years ago this morning, your mom, Gordon and I left Shreveport to move here to Nashville. What little furniture we owned left the day before ... Our thinking was that we would come up, spend a few weeks, or at the most, a couple of months, and then move back home to Shreveport ... Well, as you all know, the move became permanent at some point, and here it is fifty years later.”
As Gordon Kennedy looks back on this letter, he can be thankful his young parents pinched pennies to get by, taking a risk on a new and unfamiliar city. And at the same time, the rest of us can pinch ourselves to awaken to the reality that the music industry would have been entirely different if they hadn’t.
Read more about this topic: Gordon Kennedy (musician)
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“The life-fate of the modern individual depends not only upon the family into which he was born or which he enters by marriage, but increasingly upon the corporation in which he spends the most alert hours of his best years.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“Welcome to the great American two-career family and pass the aspirin please.”
—Anastasia Toufexis (20th century)
“My ambition for station was always easily controlled. If the place came to me it was welcome. But it never seemed to me worth seeking at the cost of self-respect, or independence. My family were not historic; they were well-to-do, did not hold or seek office. It was easy for me to be contented in private life. An honor was no honor to me, if obtained by my own seeking.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)