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The Academy of Country Music (ACM) named George Strait the Artist of the Decade for the 2000s earlier this year, and after taping the television special “George Strait: ACM Artist of the Decade All-Star Concert” last month in Las Vegas during the ACM Awards, the broadcast aired on CBS this week as a two-hour special. The George Strait tribute concert featured a star-studded lineup of Nashville favorites such as Sugarland, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Taylor Swift and more who played covers of George Strait classics and sung all kinds of praises for the smooth recording artist, and the all-star concert was just like one more plaque for Strait to hang on his wall of country music accolades.

Among all the admiration and congratulations poured into the “George Strait: ACM Artist of the Decade All-Star Concert” broadcast were some very touching words from some of Nashville’s most brightly-shining stars, and Alan Jackson gave perhaps the most radiant talk about Strait before playing a cover of the Strait classic “The Fireman,” saying, “Thank you for your friendship. Congratulations on this decade thing, but I think they’re a few decades late getting to you. When they asked me to prepare a song for this thing, after 30 years of classic stuff to go through, I went back to this one song immediately because I sang this thing a million nights in a smoky bar - just wishing I was George Strait.”

Jackson summed up his experiences with George Strait by examining his character, saying that Strait was “one of the singers who made me want to move to Nashville. I thought then, ‘He’s just a good ole boy from Texas who likes country music,’ but after knowing him 20 years, take all that hit stuff away from him and he still seems like a good ole boy from Texas who likes country music.”

Before George Strait was ruling the country music kingdom with his 57 number one-charting hit songs on the Billboard charts, he was, as Alan Jackson recalled, just a “good ole boy from Texas.” Strait grew up on a Texas ranch and started playing music as a teenager, dropping out of college and eventually enlisting in the Army in the early ’70s. After playing music with an Army-sponsored band called Rambling Country, Strait eventually left the Army and went back to school at Texas State University at San Marcos, starting his own band Ace in the Hole and slowly gravitating toward a full-time career in country music.

Honing his traditional country sound to illuminate the honky-tonk circuit, Strait was eventually signed with MCA in 1980 and immediately started pumping out hits, first making it into the Top 10 with “Unwound,” his first single released. 1982’s “Fool Hearted Memory” sparked a chain of 31 number one hit singles, and Strait easily sailed on through the decades, pounding out ’90s classics like “Easy Come, Easy Go,” “Blue Clear Sky,” “One Night at a Time” and “Check Yes or No” while climbing into the ’00s with the same fervor and overwhelming number of smooth country hits. George Strait has been a touring favorite ever since he stepped into the Nashville spotlight with his cowboy boots, oversized hat and crooked smile, and he’s still selling out arenas across the country, so get George Strait tickets from while they’re still available!

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[tags]George Strait, music, concert, tickets, country[/tags]