Groundbreaking pop-country band Alabama bringing tour to Tucson

There will be an empty spot on the stage when the multi-platinum, Country Music Hall of Fame band Alabama plays the AVA at Casino del Sol on Thursday, June 29.

Guitarist and fiddle player Jeff Cook, who founded the country supergroup with cousins Randy Owen and Teddy Gentry 50 years ago, died last November of complications from Parkinson’s. He was 73.

Six months after Cook’s death, Gentry and Owen announced plans to continue touring, which was good news to fans of the band that changed the face of modern country music.

Alabama added a decidedly pop-rock flavor to the genre almost from the beginning. Over five decades, the band scored more than 40 No. 1 hits including “Tennessee River,” “Why Lady Why,” “Love in the First Degree,” “Dixieland Delight,” “Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)” and “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas (You Gotta Have a Fiddle in the Band).” They released 26 studio albums, 15 of them certified platinum and double-platinum (1 million in sales) and put out 74 singles.

The band’s mainstream-leaning approach broadened the country music audience to include pop fans. Their music was often played on pop radio and some DJs labeled them a “pop-country crossover” act, a label that the band fully embraced.

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Alabama’s last studio album was 2017’s holiday record “American Christmas,” which followed their last country release “Southern Drawl” in 2015.

The band is set to take the AVA stage, 5655 W. Valencia Road, at 8 p.m. Thursday. Tickets are $55 to $345 through

casinodelsol.com.

The Tucson show is part of Alabama’s “Roll On II North America Tour.”