Hootie & the Blowfish

Hootie & the Blowfish is an American rock band that was popular in the second half of the 1990s and featured Darius Rucker, Dean Felber, Jim Sonefeld, and Mark Bryan. The band had charted sixteen singles on various Billboard singles charts and recorded five studio albums. Their 1994 debut album, Cracked Rear View, was the 15th best-selling album of all time in the US, having been certified platinum 16 times.

The group independently released two cassette demo EPs in 1991 and 1992. In 1993, they pressed 50,000 copies of a self-released EP, Kootchypop.[

Their mainstream debut album was Cracked Rear View and became the best-selling album of 1995. The album was propelled by four hits, "Hold My Hand", "Let Her Cry", "Only Wanna Be with You", and "Time"). In 1995, Hootie and the Blowfish and Bob Dylan reached an out-of-court settlement for the group's unauthorized use of Dylan's lyrics in their song "Only Wanna Be with You." Miami Dolphins' Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino appeared in the band's video for the song "Only Wanna Be with You", along with several other athletes.

The band won the "Best New Artist" award at the 1996 Grammy Awards and would appear on MTV Unplugged on the eve of the release of their second album, 1996's Fairweather Johnson. It contained the hit single "Old Man and Me" and the album sold four million copies in the U.S.

Hootie & the Blowfish has since released three more studio albums: Musical Chairs, Hootie & the Blowfish, and Looking for Lucky. They also released a B-sides and rarities compilation in 2000 entitled Scattered, Smothered and Covered.

In 1995, Hootie & the Blowfish contributed the song "Hey Hey What Can I Do" to the Encomium tribute album to Led Zeppelin. Their cover of Canadian group 54-40's "I Go Blind", originally released on the soundtrack to the TV series Friends in 1995, became a hit at radio in 1996 after three singles from Fairweather Johnson had been released. Both "Hey Hey What Can I Do" and "I Go Blind" were later released on the collection Scattered, Smothered and Covered.

Hootie and the Blowfish started their own record label, Breaking Records, in 1996 as a subsidiary of Atlantic. They had planned to focus on signing local Carolina acts. Edwin McCain and Cravin' Melon were both associated with the label at one point, but did not release any material on it. The Meat Puppets, Jump, Little Children, Treadmill Trackstar and Treehouse released one album each on Breaking Records. The label folded in 2000.

Hootie covered the 1968 Orpheus hit "Can't Find the Time" in 2001 for the soundtrack of the Jim Carrey movie, Me, Myself and Irene.

In 2008, Rucker announced that Hootie and the Blowfish would be going on hiatus so Rucker could pursue his solo career as a country music performer. Although the band will no longer be recording or touring, Rucker confirmed that they will still perform their scheduled charity concerts.

Rucker has recorded a solo album, Learn to Live,andt includes the singles "Don't Think I Don't Think About It", "It Won't Be Like This for Long", "Alright", all three of which have reached #1 on the U.S. Hot Country Songs chart, and "History in the Making" which peaked at #3 on the U. S. Hot Country Songs chart. Rucker's second solo album Charleston, SC 1966 was released October 8, 2010.

Music Videos

 * Be The One
 * Gravity of the Situation
 * Hold My Hand
 * I Will Wait
 * Let Her Cry
 * Old Man and Me (When I Get to Heaven)
 * One Love
 * Only Lonely
 * Only Wanna Be With You
 * Sad Caper
 * Time
 * Tucker's Town