Suzy Bogguss News

(2/8/99, 1 p.m. PST) - Industry pundits who predicted 1999 would be a year of roster-trimming in Nashville must be feeling pretty good about themselves right now: In the wake of three years' worth of declining sales, Nashville labels began letting the air out of their over-inflated rosters last year, and the bloodletting has continued into the new year.

Suzy Bogguss, a longtime Capitol Nashville artist, has parted ways with the label. Bogguss is probably best-known for her song "Hey Cinderella," off her 1993 release Something Up My Sleeve. More recent releases failed to yield any major hits, however, and her 1998 album, Nobody Love, Nobody Gets Hurt, fell quickly into obscurity.

Also at Capitol, country hunk Billy Dean is out. Like Bogguss, Dean's last release, Real Man, got little attention at radio. The former Star Search winner was the Academy Of Country Music's Top New Male Vocalist in 1991.

Asylum Records has parted company with Kevin Sharp, the artist known for his trademark bald pate, a result of chemotherapy. Sharp scored a huge hit with Measure Of A Man; the rumor is that his follow-up, Love Is, didn't pass muster with label execs, who pulled the release and asked him to recut nearly half the album. Sharp declined, and the two parted ways, with Sharp "pursuing other interests."

And finally, the axe has swung at Giant Records, where Daryle Singletary is out. Singletary had one radio hit, "The Note," in 1997.

These moves follow Mercury Records losing John Anderson and MCA-Decca saying goodbye to Dolly Parton and Rhett Akins in the wake of the Universal-PolyGram merger (LAUNCH, 1/22).

Look for more roster trimmings in the future. A prediction: "new country" hat acts, signed by the truckload in the mid-'90s, ought to be quaking in their boots about now.

To read a Dolly Parton feature, click here.

-- Lisa Zhito, Nashville

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