Johnny Paycheck

Diagnoses

Passions

Vocation

Lifestyle

Family

American country singer known for being a hard-drinking hell-raiser whose big hit, selling two million copies, was "Take This Job and Shove It," 1977. Specializing in earthy, plain-spoken songs, Johnny recorded some 70 albums and had more than two dozen hit singles. In the mid-60s, about a decade after moving to Nashville to build a country music career, he took the name of Johnny PayCheck. His career was on hold from 1989 to 1991 when he spent two years in prison for shooting a man in the head in an Ohio bar in 1985. PayCheck was sued by the Internal Revenue Service in 1982 for $103,000 in back taxes, which led to bankruptcy in 1990 when he listed debts of more than $1.6 million. After prison, he seemed to put his life in better order, giving anti-war talks to young people and becoming a regular of the Grand Ole Opry cast in 1997. He and his wife Sharon were married for more than 30 years and had one son. He died in Nashville, Tennessee on February 19, 2003. He had been bedridden in a nursing home because of emphysema and asthma Link to Wikipedia biography