The Artist
Billy Dean was born in 1962 in Florida and received a basketball scholarship to attend college in Mississippi, where he majored in physical education. However, he played the club circuit along Florida's Gulf 
Coast and used national talent contests as a vehicle for his music. He made the finals of the Wrangler Country Star Search in 1982, then won as a male vocalist champ on Ed McMahon's Star Search in 1988.
Billy released his debut album in 1990 with the hits "Only Here for a Little While" and the Grammy-nominated "Somewhere in My Broken Heart." His future hits included "Billy the Kid," "If There Hadn't Been You" and "We Just Disagree." Three of his albums were certified gold, and his self-titled 1991 effort earned platinum status. He won the Academy of Country Music Song of the Year and Male Vocalist of the Year awards in 1991. He also won two CMA awards for his participation in Common Thread: The Songs of the Eagles. Billy's last Top 10 hit came in 1996, but he surfaced as a harmony vocalist (along with Alison Krauss) on Kenny Rogers' No. 1 hit, "Buy Me a Rose." In 2004 he climbed to the middle of the country chart with "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" and released the album Let Them Be Little in 2005, with the title track reaching the Top 10.
In the midst of his early recording career, Billy also dabbled in television and film. He contributed to commercials for Valvoline, McDonald's and Chevrolet, landed a role in the brief Elvis series on ABC-TV in 1990 and appeared in bit parts on soap operas and shows, including Lois & Clark and Wings. In 1999 he costarred with Dolly Parton in the movie Blue Valley Songbird.
But despite this energetic and successful career, Billy Dean is down to earth. His home is in a part of Nashville where tourist buses never run. His neighbors work nine to five, punch time clocks or manage blue-collar business. Like Billy, they take out their own trash, cook for
their kids, and wash their own dishes. They all know each other by their first names. And there's no place he'd rather be.
"I've had the Ponderosa," he grins, leaning against his kitchen counter, a cup of coffee steaming in his hand. "In fact, I've still got it. Damn woodpeckers and worms are having a field day with it, but as far as I'm concerned, they can eat it. I'm here because this is where I want to be."
But it was quite a journey that brought Dean out of the contradictions of shooting like a comet from a childhood marked by poverty and struggle in Florida to the height of celebrity. As spotlights trained on his 6'4" frame, the young star saw only a kind of fog as he looked back from the stage. "I was having a great career," he remembers. "For four or five years everything I did went into the Top Five -- but it went against everything I was about. I was a simple country person and a new dad. I had no idea how to put it into perspective."
But in time he learned to do just that, with the help of special people in his live, especially his children. "They ended up parenting me. [I began to] listen to my kids in a new way. That's where that line comes from
in 'Let Them Be Little': 'And now you're teaching me how only a child can see.'"
Billy then discovered a different creative space, in which he felt stronger as an artist. He began writing songs more often -- songs that tapped into his experiences rather than someone else's idea of what might sell. Paradoxically, the more candidly he wrote, the more expressive and accessible his work became. "It picked up a kind of energy that wasn't there before," he explains. "I'd been known as a balladeer, and I had struggled hard to stay in a commercial vein. But letting go of that, I've found a more natural way of making music. It's really opened me up."
Today Billy's music is a direct result of his epiphany that "music" comes before "business" in the country music business. "I live a real person's life," he declares. "My career is not my life, and that scares a lot of people who think that means that you're not going to give it your best. Well, my message is, 'Man, let me have a life, and I'll give you the best stuff you could ever possibly listen to.'"
In fact, keeping his priorities in place, Billy has been encouraging families to act on what's important to the heart, like helping others in need through Sunkist's "Take a Stand" program, for which he has served as an official spokesperson since 2005. Sunkist provides signature lemonade stands to kids ages 7-12 who pledge online to raise money for their personal charities.
“It’s a privilege to support a program that puts faith and resources into the hands of children so they can act with their hearts,” said Billy Dean.
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