July 3: American country music performer Aaron Tippin is 55-years-old today.

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Aaron Dupree Tippin was born on July 3, 1958 in Pensacola, Florida, , but raised on a farm in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.

In the 1970s, he made a living as a singer, performing in various local bars. By the time Aaron was 20, he was working as a commercial pilot. In 1986, he moved to Nashville, where he eventually became a staff writer at Acuff-Rose Music.

He competed on TNN's You Can Be a Star talent contest in 1986, landed a song publishing contract and moved to Nashville in 1987. During this time he wrote songs for The Kingsmen, David Ball, Mark Collie, and Charley Pride. He would spend his nights working at Logan Aluminum in Logan County, Kentucky and spend his days driving 60 miles to Nashville to write songs.

In 1990, he accepted a recording contract with RCA Records. His debut single, "You've Got to Stand for Something" became a popular anthem for American soldiers fighting in the Gulf War and helped to establish him as a neotraditionalist country act with songs that catered primarily to blue collar workers.

At RCA, he recorded five studio albums and a Greatest Hits package. By the later half of the 1990s, however, his sales and chart performance began to decline, and he was dropped from the label's roster. Tippin switched to Lyric Street Records in 1998, where he recorded four more studio albums, counting a compilation of Christmas music.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, he released the patriotic anthem "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly"; although it was his most successful crossover single, he saw his popularity decline a second time after its release. After parting ways with Lyric Street in 2006, he founded a personal label known as Nippit Records, on which he issued the compilation album Now & Then. A concept album, In Overdrive, was released in 2009.

Tippin has released a total of nine studio albums and two compilations, with five gold certifications and one platinum certification among them. In addition, he has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including three Number Ones: "There Ain't Nothin' Wrong with the Radio" (1992), "That's as Close as I'll Get to Loving You" (1995), and "Kiss This" (2000), as well as the Top Ten hits "You've Got to Stand for Something,” "I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way,” "My Blue Angel,” "Working Man's Ph.D,” "For You I Will,” and "Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly.”

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For more about Aaron, visit his Website at -

http://aarontippin.musiccitynetworks.com/

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