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Joe Logan Diffie (born December 28, 1958) is an American country music singer known for his ballads and novelty songs. Between 1990 and 2004, Diffie charted 35 cuts on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, including five number one singles: his debut release "Home", "If the Devil Danced (In Empty Pockets)", "Third Rock from the Sun", "Pickup Man" (his longest-lasting number one, at four weeks) and "Bigger Than the Beatles". In addition to these cuts, he has 12 other top ten singles and ten other top 40 hits on the same chart. He also co-wrote singles for Holly Dunn, Tim McGraw and Jo Dee Messina.
Diffie recorded for Epic Records from 1990 to 2000, releasing seven studio albums, a Christmas album and a greatest hits package under the Epic label. He also released one studio album each through Monument Records, Broken Bow Records and Rounder Records. Among his albums, 1993's Honky Tonk Attitude and 1994's Third Rock from the Sun are certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America; 1992's Regular Joe and 1996's Life's So Funny are both certified gold. His most recent album, Homecoming: The Bluegrass Album, was released in late 2010 through Rounder.
Joe Diffie was born into a musical family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1958. His first musical performance came at age four, when he performed in his aunt's country music band. Diffie's father played guitar and banjo, and his mother sang. Following in his mother's footsteps, Diffie began to sing at an early age, often listening to the albums in his father's record collection. Diffie has said that his "Mom and Dad claimed that could sing harmony when was three years old." His family moved to San Antonio, Texas while he was in the first grade, and subsequently to Washington state where he attended fourth and fifth grades. Later, he moved to Wisconsin for the years he was in sixth grade through his second year of high school, and back to Oklahoma where he attended high school in the town of Velma. In his last two years in high school, Diffie played football, baseball and golf in addition to running track; in his senior year he was recognized as Best All-Around Male Athlete.
After graduating, he attended Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma. Although he initially earned credits toward medical school, he decided against a medical profession after marrying for the first time in 1977, and ultimately dropped out before graduation. Diffie first worked in oil fields, then drove a truck that pumped cement out of oil wells in Alice, Texas, before he moved back to Duncan to work in a foundry. During this period, he worked as a musician on the side, first in a gospel group called Higher Purpose, and then in a bluegrass band called Special Edition. Diffie then built a recording studio, began touring with Special Edition in adjacent states, and sent demo recordings to publishers in Nashville. Hank Thompson recorded Diffie's "Love on the Rocks", and Randy Travis put one of Diffie's songs on hold but ultimately did not record it.
After the foundry closed in 1986, Diffie declared bankruptcy and sold the studio out of financial necessity. He also divorced his wife, who left with their two children. Diffie spent several months in a state of depression before deciding to move to Nashville, Tennessee. There, he took a job at Gibson Guitar Corporation. While at Gibson, he contacted a songwriter and recorded more demos, including songs that would later be recorded by Ricky Van Shelton, Billy Dean, Alabama and The Forester Sisters. By mid-1989, he quit working at the company in order to record demos full-time. Diffie also met Debbie, who would later become his second wife. That same year, Diffie was contacted by Bob Montgomery, a songwriter and record producer known for working with Buddy Holly. Montgomery, who was then the vice president of A&R at Epic Records, said that he wanted to sign Diffie to a contract with the label, but had to put the singer on hold for a year. In the meantime, Holly Dunn released "There Goes My Heart Again", which Diffie co-wrote and sang the backing vocals. Following this song's chart success, Diffie signed with Epic in early 1990.
Steve Huey of Allmusic wrote that Diffie "lent his traditional sensibilities to humorous, rock-tinged novelties and plaintive ballads." His early albums for Epic mostly consisted of ballads, but starting with Honky Tonk Attitude, he began to include more up-tempo and novelty numbers. Starting with A Night to Remember, Diffie returned to a more ballad-oriented sound; Mike Kraski, then the senior vice president of sales for Sony Music Nashville, thought that the albums before it had over-emphasized his novelty releases.
Alanna Nash regularly compared Diffie's voice to that of George Jones. In her review of A Thousand Winding Roads, she contrasted the album with Mark Chesnutt's debut Too Cold at Home by saying, "While Chesnutt merely takes his inspiration from Jones, Diffie mimics Jones' delivery ... But now that he's making records himself, drops him to the rear of the pack, as a stylist with little style of his own." She thought that Diffie began to move away from his George Jones influences on A Night to Remember. William Ruhlmann wrote that Diffie "has put together a decade-plus career in country largely on his ability to succeed" in "scour Nashville publishers for ten good compositions in the established style", and that he was an "adequate but undistinguished singer." Similarly, Wilcox described Diffie as having "the vocal chops to sound like just about anyone" and thought that none of his Epic material showed any musical identity.
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