GARTH BROOKS SANG ABOUT HIM BEFORE THEY EVER MET — THEN TRIED TO GIVE HIM HALF HIS LIVER WHEN HE WAS DYING. Chris LeDoux won the world bareback riding championship in 1976. Then he recorded 22 albums in a friend’s basement, sold cassettes from the back of his truck at rodeos, and almost nobody outside the cowboy circuit knew his name. Then Garth Brooks — a young nobody from Oklahoma — put LeDoux’s name in his very first single. Overnight, the world discovered what rodeo fans had known for years. When LeDoux was diagnosed with a fatal liver disease in 2000, Brooks didn’t send flowers. He offered part of his own liver. It wasn’t compatible. But LeDoux never forgot. “He’s kind of like my guardian angel,” LeDoux said. “Every time I need some help, he’s there.” He got a transplant from another donor. He made two more albums. Then the cancer came back, and this time there was no angel big enough to stop it.
Garth Brooks Sang About Chris LeDoux Before They Ever Met — And Tried to Save His Life Years Later Before…