Before They Were Famous

Keith Urban's pre-fame past is somewhat checkered. He admits to using drugs and alcohol during long stretches away from the stage, but during one stretch -- between his work with the Ranch and the start of his solo career -- he was a guitarist for Brooks and Dunn.

Before Craig Campbell became a country star with hits like 'Family Man' and 'Fish,' he worked as a prison guard at the Rogers State Prison in Reidsville, Ga. During his two-year run as a guard, he did everything from search cells and inmates, to patrol the grounds of the strictly male facility.

Colt Ford once had two professional loves: country music and golf. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to be successful at both, so the singer (whose real name is Jason Farris Brown) dropped his clubs for the pen and microphone. It's not clear how much professional golf he played -- one article says he appeared at only a single Nationwide Tour event --  but he did quite a bit of teaching.

Before and during his time on 'American Idol,' Scotty McCreery was a cashier at Lowe's Foods, a grocery store in Garner, N.C. His boss told Taste of Country that the then-17-year-old was a fine employee. “His work ethic was great,” Terry Mascaro said in March 2011. “He was always a little bit early for his shift and customers loved him. He had a great attitude on the front end.”

Rodney Atkins was an ambitious young entrepreneur who opened his own lawn mowing business at age 12. On a recent episode of 'Day Jobs' on GAC-TV, Atkins talked about how a gig mowing his neighbor's lawn turned into a landscaping business, which included mowing cemetery plots for $10 a plot. That's pretty good money!

Between customers, Garth Brooks would write music, turning out at least one of his hits amongst selling Justins and the Luccheses. Mid-90s hitmaker Ken Mellons tells the story of running into Brooks as both tried to fit cowboys and cowgirls in boots of just the right skin and color.

Jimmy Wayne took a job as a corrections officer at the Gaston, North Carolina Corrections Facility after getting his high school diploma. He spent time in a juvenile detention facility as a teenager and watched relatives go to prison, so he says he figured it'd be something he was qualified to do.

Selling used cars led to Nashville fame for Gary Allan. He covertly slipped a cassette of his music into the deck of a car being test-driven by a wealthy California couple. They liked it and insisted on giving him $12K to chase his dream. That plan worked, because before long he landed a record deal and paid his benefactors back with royalties from his first album.

Shania Twain is a global superstar whose sold more than 75 million albums worldwide. But the Canadian-born singer's earlier years were rooted in a much more humble occupation. In addition to crafting her singing career at local dive bars, a young Eilleen Edwards spent her after-school hours asking hungry Canadians, "Would you like fries with that?" while working at McDonald's.

Johnny Cash held a number of jobs before cutting his first record with Sun Records in 1954. He started on his family farm, picking cotton. "The bolls were sharp," he says in Cash, his 1997 autobiography. "After a week or two, your fingers were covered with little red wounds, some of them pretty painful."