Alabama’s Teddy Gentry Arrested For Misdemeanor And Drug Charges
According to jail records, Alabama founding member Teddy Gentry was arrested Monday morning (9/12) on misdemeanor marijuana and drug paraphernalia charges.
The records indicate that Gentry, 70, of Fort Payne, was booked into the Cherokee County Jail at 10:38 am. He was released at 11:06 am. The jail log did not give the bond amount. A spokesman for the band said that he was aware of the incident, but Gentry had no immediate comment.
Gentry and his first cousins Randy Owen and Jeff Cook formed the band in 1969. Changing their name from Wildcountry to Alabama in 1977, the group became one of the most successful groups in country music. Their commercial peak was in the 1980s with multi-platinum albums. They had a bunch of radio hits that include “Tennessee River,” “Mountain Music,” “Dixieland Delight,” “The Closer You Get,” “Song of the South,” “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)” and many more.
Alabama was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. The CMHOF says on their website, “Between 1980 and 1993, Alabama took more than thirty records to the top of the Billboard country chart and sold millions of albums, substantially broadening country music’s audience and making themselves one of American music’s most popular acts of all time.”
They added, “By adapting the rock & roll formula of the self-contained band to country music, Alabama opened doors for group acts who followed them, such as Lonestar, the Mavericks, Restless Heart, Sawyer Brown, and Shenandoah.”
Brad Paisley released a tribute-type song to the band in 2011, with which the band sang along. The lyrics include, “Listenin’ to old Alabama, drivin’ through Tennessee / A little Dixieland delight at the right time of the night / And she can’t keep her hands off of me! / And now we’re rollin’ down an old back road / I got the steering wheel in one hand / We’ll find a hideaway where she and I can play / In mother nature’s band.”
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