Today in 1966, Tracy Byrd was born in Vidor, Texas. He emerged in 1993 to record a series of hits, including “Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich And Famous,” “Watermelon Crawl,” and “The Keeper Of The Stars.”

Byrd has charted more than thirty hit singles in his career, including eleven additional Top Ten hits. He has also released ten studio albums and two greatest-hits albums, with four gold certifications and one double-platinum certification from the RIAA.

Byrd has been the National Spokesperson for Special Olympics International for the Country Music Association. He developed a crank bait fishing lure marketed by Norman Lures called The Lifestyles Of The Not So Rich & Famous’, named after his hit recording of the song written by Byron Hill and Wayne Tester. For every one of the lures sold Byrd donated ten cents to the Special Olympics.

For several years Byrd hosted an annual golfing/fishing/music event, “The Tracy Byrd Homecoming Weekend,” later called “The Beaumont Boys Bash”, in Southeast Texas to raise money for local charities, including the March of Dimes, the Children’s Miracle Network, and culminating in the donation of money to fund the Tracy Byrd Hyperbaric Medicine and Wound Care Center at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Beaumont. Byrd also raised money by soliciting pledges for his attempt to complete the 2002 Houston Marathon. He finished the marathon, and donated all of his pledges to the Children’s Miracle Network.

In 2003 Byrd published Eat Like a Byrd: The Tracy Byrd Cookbook. He also launched a line of spices, rubs, and marinades to go along with it, called “Tracy Byrd’s Tiny Town Products”; a portion of these sales were donated to the Children’s Miracle Network.

Source: Wikipedia