About Terry Allen (country singer)
Terry Allen (born May 7, 1943) is an American singer-songwriter and visual artist from Lubbock, Texas. Allen's musical career spans several albums in the Texas country and outlaw country genres, and his visual art includes painting, conceptual art, performance, and sculpture, with a number of notable bronze sculptures installed publicly in various cities throughout the United States. He currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Allen has recorded twelve albums of original songs, including the landmark releases Juarez (1975) and Lubbock (On Everything) (1979). His song "Amarillo Highway" has been covered by Bobby Bare, Sturgill Simpson, Robert Earl Keen and The Amos Garrett/Doug Sahm/Gene Taylor Band. Other artists who have recorded Allen's songs include Guy Clark, Little Feat, David Byrne, Doug Sahm, Ricky Nelson, and Lucinda Williams. Rolling Stone magazine describes his catalog, reaching back to Juarez as "..uniformly eccentric and uncompromising, savage and beautiful, literate and guttural." Allen also works with a wide variety of media including musical and theatrical performances, sculpture, painting, drawing and video, and installations which incorporate any and all of these media. His work has been shown throughout the United States and internationally. In 1962, while in high school, he wrote his first song, "Red Bird", which he would go on to perform live on Shindig! in 1965, and record for his 1980 album Smokin' the Dummy. One of the songs, "New Delhi Freight Train", was first recorded by Little Feat and appears on their 1977 album Time Loves a Hero. Allen first learned to play piano from his mother, Pauline Pierce Allen, a professional musician.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.