Ireland, France, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, and
Australia during this period, where his records were
hits and his concerts usually sold out.
One of the highlights of Brooks’s career in the
1990’s was his concertGarth: Live from Central Park,
which aired on August 7, 1997. The free concert
drew hundreds of thousands of people, estimated
from 250,000 to 750,000. An additional 14.6 million
viewers watched the performance live on Home Box
Office (HBO), making it the most-watched special
on cable television in 1997.
Red Strokes Entertainment, Brooks’s production
company, together with Paramount Pictures, worked
on developing a movie starring the singer in 1999.
The movie’s main character was to be a fictional rock
singer named Chris Gaines. To publicize the project,
Brooks played the character in a 1999 album, titled
Garth Brooks in...TheLife of Chris Gaines.Brooks’s ac-
tive promotion of the album and film on television
did not generate much buzz, and the film left the
majority of the audience bewildered or totally unre-
ceptive.
As his career exerted ever more demands for time
and energy, Brooks had difficulty handling the con-
flicts between work and family life. He had been talk-
ing about retirement since 1992, but in 1999 Brooks
appeared on the Nashville Network and again men-
tioned retirement. Record sales had begun to de-
cline, and Brooks officially announced plans to di-
vorce from his wife in 2000.
Impact Along with record-breaking sales, Garth
Brooks was one of the most rewarded musicians
of the 1990’s. He won one Grammy, eleven Ameri-
can Music Awards, ten Country Music Associa-
tion Awards, fourteen Academy of Country Music
Awards, five World Music Awards, and eight People’s
Choice Awards. He was named Artist of the ’90s at
the 1997 Blockbuster Entertainment Awards. He
raised the international visibility and prestige of
country music to an unprecedented level, and he
went on to become the biggest best-selling solo artist
in U.S. music history in the late 1990’s.
Further Reading
Feiler, Bruce. Dreaming Out Loud: Garth Brooks,
Wynonna Judd, Wade Hayes, and the Changing Face of
Nashville. New York: Avon Books, 1998. The au-
thor travels to Nashville to investigate the chang-
ing country music scene in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Features three country music stars, with an em-
phasis on Brooks.
Sgammato, Jo.American Thunder: The Garth Brooks
Stor y. New York: Ballantine, 1999. Biography in-
cludes stories about the artist’s life and his songs
by aNew York Timesbest-selling author.
Stauffer, Stacey.Garth Brooks. New York: Facts On
File, 1999. A basic biography of the country
singer who changed the face of country music.
Sheila Golburgh JohnsonSee also Country music; Digital audio; Lang, K. D.;
McEntire, Reba; Music; Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Museum. Brown, Ron
Identification Secretary of commerce, 1993-1996
Born August 1, 1941; Washington, D.C.
Died April 3, 1996; near Dubrovnik, Croatia
The first African American secretar y of commerce, Brown
served in that position during the first Clinton administra-
tion. He died in a plane crash while on an official trade
mission to Croatia.Ronald Harmon Brown chaired the Democratic Na-
tional Committee during the 1992 election cam-
paign and was widely credited with uniting the party
around Bill Clinton after the primaries and effec-
tively redefining the Democrats’ image. His succes-
sor as commerce secretary, Mickey Kantor, who was
Clinton’s campaign manager, called Brown “the best
chairman we’ve ever had.”
Brown’s nomination was seen as reward for his
skillful management of the political primaries, yet
the Commerce Department in 1992 was regarded as
an ineffective bureaucracy; his appointment was not
a prestigious one. Business interests feared that
Brown would be too tough on them; advocates of
business regulation worried that he would be too
sympathetic, as a former lobbyist. With his legend-
ary negotiating skill and energy, Brown boosted U.S.
exports and doubled the budget for promoting
high-technology investment. He won multibillion-
dollar contracts for American telecommunications
and aircraft companies. In 1995,The New Republic
labeled Brown “the most formidable Commerce
secretary since Herbert Hoover.”122 Brown, Ron The Nineties in America