Missouri State Fair (Grandstand)

Chris Cagle
When he was four years old, Chris Cagle moved from Louisiana to the outskirts of Houston, where he grew up. He began taking guitar lessons at six, but gave them up after a year. He took piano lessons during high school and returned to the guitar in his senior year....

Gary Allan
Gary Allan hit the honky tonk circuit in his native Southern California at the seasoned age of 12. Playing in and out of the smoky, sweaty bars with his dad's band led Allan to follow in his father's footsteps and start his own band....

The Oak Ridge Boys
One of the longest-running groups in country music, the Oak Ridge Boys started life as a gospel quartet before gradually modernizing their style and moving into secular country-pop. Yet even at the height of their popularity in the late '70s and early '80s -- when they were big enough to cross over to the pop charts -- their sound always remained deeply rooted in country gospel harmony....

Toby Keith
Born in Clinton, OK, in 1961, Toby Keith grew up on a farm just outside Oklahoma City and took to the guitar before he reached the age of nine, growing proficient with remarkable speed and efficiency. As a young man, he worked the oil fields to support himself and formed a musical act patterned after Alabama, the Easy Money Band, but his primary gig fell through when the oil market entered a slump, forcing him to look elsewhere....