American Thunder: The Garth Brooks Story - Jo Sgammato - Mass Market Paperback

The Boy In February of 1962, according to the Census Bureau, 318,090 people were born in the United States. These babies entered the world with the potential to be or do anything. In America, a land of limitless opportunity where citizens were encouraged to reach for the sky, no dream was too big, no ambition unattainable. Troyal Garth Brooks was born on the seventh day of February 1962, at St. John Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In America's heartland, wheat grew tall, cowboys stood taller, and proud Native Americans kept the country's true history alive. Giant oil rigs gushed black gold, fueling the prosperity and peace that made dreaming possible. Two weeks after Garth's birth, John Glenn safely orbited the earth three times and President John F. Kennedy traveled to NASA headquarters in Florida to personally welcome him home. Meanwhile, back in Washington, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy was conducting the first nationally televised tour of the White House. From suburban New Jersey to rural Arkansas, the talk was of desegregation, as Martin Luther King, Jr., was spreading his dream. Overseas, the United States was expanding its military role in a country called Vietnam. And a "crisis of abundance," a surplus of agricultural products, including milk, led the government to pay farmers to produce less. The proud parents on that seventh day of February 1962, Colleen Carroll Brooks and Troyal Raymond Brooks, had begun their lives together with a family that consisted of three of Colleen's children and one of Troyal's. Together they had been blessed with one son, Kelly, and now, eighteen months later, they completed their family with the birth of their last child. Two loving parents and six lucky children formed a household where the words stepchildren, half brother, and half sister were never used. Tulsa was a town that loved music. Cain's Ballroom, over on Fourth and Main, was known as Western Swing's own Alamo. Cain's had been christened by the sounds of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, the swingin'est band in the West, which played there almost every Thursday and Saturday night from 1935 to 1943. Bob Wills's unique style--a mix of everything from the blues to cowboy music, from Mexican mariachi to German polka, and from Dixieland jazz to pure bluegrass--did more than transform American music forever. It drew everyone at Cain's Ballroom to the curly maplewood dance floor mounted on sets of Dodge truck springs. Another attraction at Cain's in the 1930s and '40s was the availability of bootleg whiskey--Prohibition wasn't repealed in Oklahoma until 1957. Dancing and booze made for some wild times. When things got too rowdy, Bob Wills tapped the microphone with his fiddle bow and played a church hymn. Colleen Brooks, Garth's mother, loved music herself. As Colleen Carroll, she'd been a featured singer on "Red Foley's Ozark Jubilee," the pioneering radio and television show. Her black curly hair draping down to her shoulders, a ribbon tied sweetly at the neckline of her fringed shirt, Colleen sang her heart out. Her strong, sweet, clear voice captured the attention of the folks at Capitol Records, where she recorded four singles in the mid-1950s. Her talent might have led to fame and fortune, but it was hard to be a female singer back then, and even harder if you were married and had children. Colleen loved music, but she loved family life even more. Troyal Brooks, called Raymond by everyone who knew him, was a former U.S. marine. He worked as an engineer and draftsman for one of Tulsa's many oil companies, Union of California (Union 76). The big city of Tulsa was exciting, but Colleen and Raymond wanted a quieter life for their family. In 1966 they moved to Yukon, a town of 10,000 residents about fifteen miles southeast of Oklahoma City. The ride from Tulsa to Oklahoma City was along America's most famous highway, a road of legend,Sgammato, Jo is the author of 'American Thunder: The Garth Brooks Story - Jo Sgammato - Mass Market Paperback' with ISBN 9780345439505 and ISBN 0345439503.