Darius Rucker

Rucker was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina, where his family history goes back generations. He lives in Charleston with his wife and three children.[2] His single mother, Carolyn, a nurse at Medical University of South Carolina, raised him with his three sisters and two brothers.[3] According to Rucker, his father was never around, and Rucker saw him only before church on Sundays.[4] His father was in a gospel band called The Traveling Echoes.[5] Rucker has said that he had a typical Southern African-American upbringing.[2] His family attended church every Sunday and was economically poor, and at one point, his mother, her two sisters, his grandmother and 14 children were all living in a three-bedroom house.[2] But he says that he looks back on his childhood with very fond memories.[2] His sister, L'Corine, recalled that singing was always his dream.[2]

Darius Rucker has been the lead singer of Hootie & the Blowfish since its formation in 1986. He met fellow band members Mark Bryan, Jim "Soni" Sonefeld,[2] and Dean Felber while attending the University of South Carolina. Bryan first heard Rucker singing in the shower, and the two became a duo, playing R.E.M. covers at a local venue.[6] They later recruited Felber and finally Sonefeld joined in 1989.[6] As a member of Hootie & the Blowfish, Rucker has recorded six studio albums: Cracked Rear View – 1994, Fairweather Johnson – 1996, Musical Chairs – 1998, Scattered, Smothered & Covered – 2000, Hootie & the Blowfish and Looking for Lucky – 2005, also charting within the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 six times.[7] All six albums feature songs that Rucker, Bryan and Felber wrote. As the frontman, Rucker began to be called simply "Hootie" by fans,[8] though the band title combines the nicknames of his college friends.[3] Before his rise to fame, he lived in the basement of the Sigma Phi Epsilon house at the University of South Carolina, attempting to launch his career through the college bar scene.

Rucker's signature contribution to the band is his baritone voice, which Rolling Stone has called "ingratiating,"[9] TIME has called "low, gruff, [and] charismatic,"[5] and Entertainment Weekly has characterized as a "barrelhouse growl."[10] Rucker said they "flipped" the formula of the all black band with a white frontman, like Frank Sinatra performing with Count Basie.[8] Musically, he has sometimes been criticized or spoofed for not being "black enough".[6] Saturday Night Live ran a sketch of Tim Meadows playing Rucker leading beer-drinking, white fraternity members in a counter-march to Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March.[5][11] He also received death threats for singing the Hootie song "Drowning," a protest song against the flying of the Confederate flag above the South Carolina statehouse.[5]

Shortly after gaining a measure of fame, Felber and Rucker (who consider themselves best friends) moved into an apartment in Columbia, South Carolina.[6] With Rucker's recognition as the frontman of a successful band came increased opportunities. In October 1995, he was asked to sing the national anthem at the World Series.[11] Frank Sinatra invited him to sing at his 80th birthday party; he sang "The Lady Is a Tramp."[12] That same week, he made a voice cameo in an episode of the sitcom Friends.[11] He also joined Nanci Griffith on the song "Gulf Coast Highway" for her 1997 album Blue Roses from the Moons,[13] and sang backing vocals on Radney Foster's 1999 album See What You Want to See.[14] He encouraged Atlantic Records to agree to a deal with Edwin McCain and made a guest appearance on McCain's debut album, Honor Among Thieves.[15]

In regard to the future of Hootie & the Blowfish, Rucker was quoted by CBS news as stating in late 2011, "I don't think we'll ever break up totally. We're Hootie & the Blowfish. ... We'll make another record and do another tour someday. I don't know when, but it will happen. There's one more in us."[16] After a ten-year hiatus, Rucker and the band announced that they will be touring with Barenaked Ladies in 2019 while releasing a new album the same year.[17]

Their sixth studio album Imperfect Circle was released on November 1, 2019.[18]

In 2001, he made his solo R&B debut album, The Return of Mongo Slade, for Atlantic Records. Because of contractual changes, it was never released by the label.[19] Hidden Beach Recordings, an independent label, acquired the masters from Atlantic and released the album as Back to Then in July 2002.[19] The album included work from the production team of Jill Scott, and she made an appearance on the track "Hold On."[20] The single "This Is My World" was featured in the 2001 comedy film Shallow Hal. In regards to the album, "That was just a minute in my life," he later told The Arizona Republic about the record. "I was listening to a lot of Notorious B.I.G. and Lauryn Hill at that time, and I wanted to make a neo soul record." [21] He also said in the article that he doesn't anticipate recording an R&B-styled disc again. "Country music is my day job now. I'll probably do this till it's all over, but that album was a lot of fun."[21]

Rucker appeared on a pop-star edition of the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in July 2001.[22] He also portrayed a singing cowboy in a television commercial for the fast-food company Burger King, promoting its TenderCrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch sandwich in 2005. In the commercial, he sang a jingle set to the tune of "Big Rock Candy Mountain."[23] In 2006 Rucker lent his voice to the track "God's Reasons" written by Dean Dinning and Joel A. Miller for the film The Still Life.

2008–2009: Learn to Live

In early 2008, Rucker signed to Capitol Records Nashville as the beginning of a career in country music. His first solo single, "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" (which he co-wrote with Clay Mills) debuted at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts for the week of May 3, 2008. It is the first single from his second album, Learn to Live. For this album, Rucker worked with Frank Rogers, a record producer who has also produced for Brad Paisley and Trace Adkins.[24] Rucker also made his Grand Ole Opry debut in July 2008.[25][26] The single reached number one in September,[27] making Rucker the first solo, African-American artist to chart a number one country hit since Charley Pride's "Night Games" in 1983.[28]

Rucker sings to a crowd during an Operation Pacific Greetings tour concert.

Learn to Live was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on February 6, 2009, and received a platinum certification on August 7, 2009.[29] The album's second single, "It Won't Be Like This for Long", spent three weeks at the top of the country chart in mid-2009. Its follow-up, "Alright", became Rucker's third straight No. 1 hit, making him the first singer to have his first three country singles reach No. 1 since Wynonna in 1992.[30] The album's fourth single, "History in the Making" was released in September and peaked at No. 3.[31] The singles also crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at 35, 36, 30 and 61.[32]

"You see a lot of people doing a one-off, saying, 'This is my country record.' But this is a career I'm trying to build. The people that say that they don't get it, I'll let the music speak for itself. I plan to do a lot of country records."[33]

—Rucker, Billboard, 2008

Billboard magazine said that "there's a sense of purpose that makes Rucker feel like a member of the country family, rather than calculating interloper."[34] Rucker made visits to various country stations around the United States, explaining that he was aware that he was the "new kid on the block."[35] Mike Culotta, the program director of Tampa, Florida, radio station WQYK-FM expected that Rucker would be "somebody who would have entitlement," but instead said that "Darius engaged everybody."[36] When Rucker found that "Don't Think I Don't Think About It" went to number one, he cried.[37] On November 11, 2009, Rucker won the Country Music Association New Artist of the Year award (formerly known as the Horizon Award), making him the first African American to do so since the award was introduced in 1981.[38] Only one other African American has won at the CMAs: Charley Pride, who won entertainer of the year in 1971 and male vocalist in 1971 and 1972.[39]

2016–present: When Was the Last Time

Rucker at Daytona International Speedway in 2020

On January 6, 2016, Rucker announced that he was working on his fifth country album. The album's lead single, "If I Told You" was released to country radio on July 5, 2016.[53] It reached number one in the Country Airplay chart nearly a year later, and peaked at number four on the Hot Country Chart. Rucker also returned to the C2C: Country to Country festival in the UK in March 2017, where he was second on the bill to Reba McEntire.

On May 29, 2016, Rucker performed the national anthem prior to the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500.[54] Rucker also performed the national anthem for a game between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets on September 15. Rucker agreed to perform the song at the behest of personal friend and former Bills player Bruce Smith, whose jersey was being retired that night.[55] He sang the national anthem again ahead of the Saints-Dolphins game held at London's Wembley Stadium in October 2017, as part of the NFL International Series.

Rucker was selected as one of 30 artists to perform on "Forever Country", a mash-up track of "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "On the Road Again" and "I Will Always Love You", which celebrates 50 years of the CMA Awards.[56] On July 24, 2017, Rucker released the second single from his upcoming album, titled "For the First Time." On July 26, 2017, he shared details of his fifth country album, titled When Was the Last Time and it was released on October 20, 2017.

Rucker appeared as a mentor on seventeenth season of The Voice for Team Blake.[57] Rucker released Beers and Sunshine[58] in August 2020 under Capitol Records.

Rucker is an ardent South Carolina Gamecocks fan as well as a Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Reds fan.[59] He also likes the film Stir Crazy, which he has seen more than 100 times.[60] To show his loyalty to his University, he gave a free concert which was held at the Colonial Life Arena after the football team was able to win 6 games following a pair of losing seasons after joining the Southeastern Conference.[6]

Rucker's mother died in November 1992 of a heart attack.[3][6] His grief inspired two Hootie & the Blowfish songs: "I'm Goin' Home" and "Not Even the Trees."[5][6] On April 21, 1995, his girlfriend (Elizabeth Ann Phillips) gave birth to Rucker's first child, Carolyn Pearl Phillips.[2] Rucker married Beth Leonard in 2000.[61] His second daughter, Daniella Rose, was born to his wife, Beth, on May 16, 2001.[62] They had a son, Jack, in 2005. The Hootie song "Where Were You" is about Rucker's strained relationship with his father, and was released only in Europe, where Rucker thought that his father would be unlikely to hear it.[5] His country single "Alright" was inspired by his marriage.[63] Rucker and his wife announced their conscious uncoupling in 2020.[61]

Rucker is a friend of the golfer Tiger Woods, whom he met in a bar when Woods was 18. Rucker sang at the golfer's wedding with Hootie & the Blowfish and at his father's funeral.[64] His interest in golf goes well beyond his relationship with Woods; he was a VIP guest of Team USA at the 2016 Ryder Cup, and he attended Arnold Palmer's funeral shortly before the Cup.[65]

On November 7, 2016, Rucker told ESPN that he had become a partner in MGC Sports, a sports agency that currently represents golfers (among them Steve Stricker and Kenny Perry), football players, and coaches. He added that he was planning to reduce his performance commitments from 100 dates per year to about 30, and that he thought that his experience in the entertainment business would be an asset to potential clients. Rucker will be able to work without restrictions for golfers, but because he is not registered with the NFL players' union, he initially will only be able to meet with NFL players under very limited circumstances.[65]

For the Undercover Boss series episode "Celebrity Undercover Boss: Darius Rucker" which premiered May 12, 2017, Rucker disguised himself as a 62-year-old music teacher, ran an open mic night and worked as a roadie.[66]

Rucker has regularly worked with charities that support sick and underprivileged children, via benefit concerts, volunteering, the PGA The First Tee Program, and the Hootie & The Blowfish Foundation which has raised nearly $4.5 million to provide funding to public education systems throughout South Carolina.[67]

He serves as a board member of the MUSC Children's Hospital in Charleston, SC. where his mother worked for over 30 years from the time Rucker was a child, and has helped raise millions of dollars to help build a new hospital.[68][69]

He also made a commitment to support St. Jude Children's Research Hospital after touring the facility in 2008. Since then, Rucker has spearheaded an annual event resulting in over $1.6M raised for St. Jude's to date.[70]

Headlining

• Southern Style Tour (2015)
• Good for a Good Time (2016)

Co-headlining

• Summer Plays on Tour (2018) with Lady Antebellum

Supporting

• H2O II: Wetter and Wilder Tour with Brad Paisley (2012)
• Own the Night Tour with Lady Antebellum (2012)

Studio albums

• Back to Then (2002)
• Learn to Live (2008)
• Charleston, SC 1966 (2010)
• True Believers (2013)
• Southern Style (2015)
• When Was the Last Time (2017)

• Official website
• Darius Rucker at AllMusic
• Darius Rucker talks about True Believers on Ben Sorensen's REAL Country