The 1990s were an exhilarating and glorious period for the Chinese music scene.
At that time, a large number of male singers with high appearance and strength emerged, such as Mao Ning, Lin Yilun, Xie Xiaodong, Dai Jun, Cai Guoqing, Jiang Tao, etc., and their classic golden songs were so popular that almost everyone knew it.
When it comes to the powerful male singers of the 90s, there is one person that cannot be ignored. He is the "ivy" Jiang Tao in the music world, and his life can be described as a low-open high-going.
In 1998, snowflakes fell plum blossoms and opened branches, that year was the fifth time Jiang Tao appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, he sang affectionately: "Look at the sky above your head, walk away from the horse Pingchuan." Facing a full house of children and grandchildren, I prayed in my heart..."
He said: "This song 'Yugong Moving Mountain' is not only a classic of his singing career, but also accurately expresses the trajectory of his life. ”
He went from a railway worker to a "North Drifter" to the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala 12 times. After becoming famous, he did not change his original intention, entered the industry for more than 30 years with zero scandals, and never ended up with his wife. Compared with many male stars, Jiang Tao is the quiet winner of life.
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On October 26, 1967, a family of ordinary people surnamed Jiang in Qingdao, Shandong Province, ushered in a great joy - their youngest son, Jiang Tao, was born.
But the joy of the birth of a new life did not last long in this family. Before the birth of the youngest son, the family had already raised a son and a daughter.
Papa Jiang is a railway worker, and Mama Jiang is a textile worker. Both of them are busy at work, the three children are similar in age, the family is noisy and noisy, coupled with daily chores such as chai rice, oil, salt, sauce and vinegar tea, so that the relationship between Jiang's father and Jiang's mother is becoming increasingly tense.
Jiang Tao said: "When I was a child, I watched my brother and sister fight every day. My sister's name was Jiang Kangmei, and then my brother wrote on the back of a mirror at home: "Down with Jiang Kangmei." ”
At that time, Big Brother Jiang was bent on competing with his sister, but he didn't know that it was their last duel. When the youngest son, Jiang Tao, was four years old, the couple chose to divorce by agreement.
The eldest son was awarded to Jiang's mother, and the second daughter and the younger son were awarded to Jiang's father. Since then, the family of five has dispersed.
In the first few years after the divorce, Jiang's father and two children had a very hard time. At that time, Jiang Dad was the director of the freight department, and the unit saw that he had no place to live with a big man and two children, so he reluctantly gave his family of three to live in Jiang Dad's 8-square-meter "office".
To say that the good point is "office", to say that the bad point is to "utility room". The room was piled with cinder, a lot of scrap wagons, a small house of 8 square meters, and the three of them could turn around and touch each other.
In order to live more relaxed, Jiang Dad set up a simple version of the stove at the door to cook on the fire. In addition to raising two children, Jiang Dad also sends money to his parents living in his hometown in Anhui Every month.
Although life was very hard, Father Jiang never suffered only himself, not his children. Jiang Dad saw that every time his youngest son Jiang Tao heard music, his body would swing with it.
So, with a big wave of his hand, he bought a "drama box" for his son. Qingdao people call the radio a drama box.
Jiang Tao said: "When I was a child, I especially liked to listen to the drama box, and listening to the drama box made me learn to sing opera, singing jade, singing Yang Zirong, and singing Shao Jianbo. ”
He said: "I started in kindergarten class at the age of five and sang until elementary school. I was in elementary school in Xinglong Road Primary School, Sifang District, Qingdao City, I was crazy, as soon as my classmates applauded, I began to sing. And sing very high, no matter how high the pitch, dare to sing. ”
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At that time, many people around him laughed at this child who "did not know the height of the sky" and "too ostentatious", but at that time, Jiang Tao could not hear the rumors of the outside world, and he was completely addicted to his own music world.
But because of this, occasionally, his musical talent was discovered by the teachers of the Children's Palace in Sifang District, Qingdao City, and entered the Children's Palace to study.
Unlike the pain of other children being forced into art classes, Jiang Tao, who loves to sing, is very happy and can sing every day. Just like this, his father suffered, and his son had to take cultural classes in the morning, professional classes at the Children's Palace in the afternoon, and often performed on weekends.
Dad's work is not easy, but he can insist on sending his children to the Children's Palace to study all year round and rain without hindrance. However, at that time, Jiang Dad did not think of his uncomplaining and regretful efforts, in exchange for his son's vocal cord tearing.
The most important thing about singing is his voice, but when Jiang Tao was 10 years old, he sang his voice badly.
He said: "I sang guo Jianguang (the classic Peking opera "Sha Jiabang") in the Children's Palace for a year, and no one in the family engaged in art, and my young voice was torn apart, and suddenly one day the voice broke. ”
At that time, the teachers of the Children's Palace were all anxious and led him everywhere to find a doctor. I don't know if it was the poor chinese medicine skills of jianghu lang at that time or what was the matter, he sentenced his voice to death, and gave up the road of singing and singing.
It wasn't until he grew up that he didn't know it was called "inverting the warehouse." "This is a hurdle that many opera actors have to go through, that is, the voice becomes lower or dumber during adolescence and development.
This also paved the way for Jiang Tao to step into the pop music scene in the future, because it does not matter if the voice of singing popular songs is hoarse, as long as the voice is sung well, the hoarse voice is more characteristic.
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But at that time, Jiang Tao did not know, nor did his teacher. What should I do if my throat is broken?
The teacher of the Children's Palace could not bear to throw him back to the school, and seeing that he had thick eyebrows, big eyes, long spirits, and long hands and feet, he said, "You go and learn to dance." ”
But for a child who is ten years old and has never practiced dance, pressing his legs is not an easy task. He couldn't lift his legs himself, and the teacher helped him put his hard legs on the shelf, and the teacher cried as he pressed.
Pressing his legs every day made him miserable, and every day he washed his face with tears.
Fortunately, the kung fu paid off, and he really became a dancer. When Prince Sihanouk of Thailand visited China that year, he performed "I Picked Up a Penny on the Side of the Road" for the prince.
However, a joke was made, the military hat he was wearing was enlarged, and when he jumped from the side curtain to the center of the stage, his hat fell to cover his eyes, and the audience laughed.
This is a stage accident, a big mistake. The teacher saw that the child's singing voice was broken, and he danced smoothly. At that time, the Juvenile Palace Pipe Band happened to lack a clarinet.
At the age of 13, he was "thrown" into the wind band again, and studied clarinet for 4-5 years. Pipe bands often have to go out to perform, and when schools want to have sports meetings, they play "Athletes' March" in the pipe band.
Because the reed of the clarinet is difficult to master, Jiang Tao often blows the scoop and is criticized every day. Wang Yongqing, a small friend who played clarinet with him at that time, often joked: "Jiang Tao is because he can't play clarinet well, so he changed his career to singing." ”
But fortunately, this experience of learning clarinet laid a deep foundation for Jiang Tao to become a professional singer for a long time, allowing him to learn to read staves and make him not afraid to perform on the surface of the crowd.
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Learning art is not too much, in high school Jiang Tao also went to learn guitar. On the way to pursue his musical dreams, he also met his first girlfriend, true love - Wan Xiaomu.
The teacher who taught guitar happened to be Wan Xiaomu's third uncle and three aunts, Wan Xiaomu often went to the third uncle's house during that time, and the third uncle and three aunts were very optimistic about this hard-working young man, so they matched the two.
However, the relationship was not supported by the woman's parents.
Girlfriend Wan Xiaomu's family is very wealthy, his father is a pilot, his grandfather is one of the rich people in Qingdao, he works as an inspector in a state-owned enterprise, and the family lives in a western-style house symbolized by a rich man.
At that time, Jiang Tao failed the college entrance examination, and he was not admitted to the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and the Shandong Conservatory of Music.
CCTV recruited an announcer and joined the army, and he signed up. After layers of selection, the announcer selected only him and Wang Ning in the Qingdao division, but in the end CCTV chose Wang Ning, and he was defeated.
People are unlucky enough to even drink water and stuff their teeth, and he is also thrown down to join the army to select him.
This is the story of "Bai Fumei" meeting a poor boy, the door is not right, where the woman's parents are willing to let the baby daughter marry the poor boy.
But Wan Xiaomu admired Jiang Tao's talent very much, and she was determined to be with Jiang Tao, and the eight cows could not pull back. In the end, Wan's father and Wan's mother, who could not help their daughter, could only agree.
Watching his son suffer setbacks along the way, Jiang's father gritted his teeth and retired 6 years in advance, allowing his 19-year-old son to take over his shift and become a railway worker at Qingdao Railway Station.
In this way, Jiang Tao started the life of a railway worker.
He was assigned to the operation workshop, where the rails in front of the workshop crisscrossed like a large web woven by spiders, and the main person in the operation workshop was responsible for receiving, marshalling, and picking and hanging the trains.
When the freight train slows down through the platform, he needs to jump between the railway and the moving train, and make a quick shot again and again to ensure that the train can see the timely and accurate group departure every time.
Once, Jiang Tao's colleague did not fasten his seat belt, fell to the bottom of the train, and died on the spot. Seeing a colleague who works together every day have an accident in front of him, this incident hit him very hard.
He began to think, "Do you really want to work here until you get old?" ”
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At that time, his first love girlfriend Wan Xiaomu said to her boyfriend Jiang Tao, who was in a confused period: "You can continue to sing, you don't waste your musical talent." ”
Therefore, in his spare time, Jiang Tao once again picked up his own "creation" road.
In 1987, he composed the song "Memories of the Little Station".
The song reflects his real railway life and also won the first prize of the Ministry of Railways 'Song of the Builders' Song' literary and artistic performance. In 1988, he married his girlfriend Wan Xiaomu and gave birth to a son, Jiang Yukuo.
In the same year, Jiang Tao went to Beijing for the first time to participate in the National Young Singers Television Grand Prix held by CCTV, referred to as the "Youth Song Competition".
The transportation and accommodation expenses to the Beijing competition must all be borne by themselves, which is a large expense. Coupled with the fact that the wife has just given birth to a child, the family is tight.
At that time, the people around him did not understand Jiang Tao, who was holding an iron rice bowl, obviously he could live a very comfortable family, but he wanted to participate in the competition and live the life of a family of three so tightly?
But his wife Wan Xiaomu unconditionally paid her husband to chase her dreams. She said to Jiang Tao: "As long as you make up your mind, you don't have to worry about the money, I can borrow it." ”
So Jiang Tao went to Beijing to play. On the other end, after Wan Xiaomu borrowed money from her mother's family to her husband to go to the game, in order to repay the money, she had not yet been out of confinement, and secretly went to the construction site canteen to cook for people and earn money to pay off debts.
Unfortunately, this "Youth Song Contest" Jiang Tao returned home in defeat and did not win any place. When he returned home, he found that his wife was not at home and that his son was being cared for by his father, so he asked his father, "Where has Komaki gone?" ”
After asking why, he went to the front of the construction site where his wife worked. Looking at the wife from the "rich" family, her face is full of oil and sweat, she is stir-frying vegetables in a large iron pot.
His heart was like a knife, and he burst into tears in an instant, but his wife Wan Xiaomu comforted him: "It's okay, I'm bored at home, it's good to come out and do something." ”
From that moment on, he secretly swore: "I must sing well, I must become a professional singer, and let my father and XiaoMu live a good life." ”
After two years, in 1990, Jiang Tao participated in the "Youth Song Competition" again, and this time he still failed to enter the final. Successive blows made Jiang Tao disheartened. Unable to bear to let his family suffer for his dream of "seeing no hope", he wants to give up singing.
His wife, Wan Xiaomu, encouraged her husband to say: "It has nothing to do with my children suffering, I am afraid that you will not be motivated." It is a man who will lose and fight again and again. ”
Under the encouragement of his wife, in 1992, Jiang Tao participated in CCTV's "Youth Song Competition" for the third time. Unlike the previous two times when he stopped in the final, this time Jiang Tao passed five levels and slashed six generals, and reached the final very smoothly.
The final group of players included Mao Ning, Han Hong, Sun Hao, Chen Hong, Sun Yue, Jin Xuefeng, Huo Feng and other powerful singers. In the end, Jiang Tao overwhelmed everyone with the song "Snow in the Hometown" and won the Gold Award for Popular Singing in one fell swoop.
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But winning the title did not end their "hard days". After learning that her husband won the championship, his wife Wan Xiaomu took her son and Wan's mother to Beijing to find her husband at the first time.
When they came out of Beijing, it was not easy for their family of four. In Beijing, where talents are born, Jiang Tao is just a singer who has won an award once and is not famous.
Although Jiang Tao was the champion of the "Qingge Song Competition", no unit accepted him, and no one asked him to perform. With a meager income, he could only rent a basement in a hotel on South Reese Road for his wife, son, and mother-in-law to rent temporarily.
But after only one night, all their money, as well as the clothes and shoes they had brought from home and in their duffel bags, were all stolen by thieves.
Forced to do so, Wan Xiaomu could only take a family of four to his cousin who lived in Beijing. My cousin's house had only two rooms, one for the bedroom and one for the utility room, where cabbage was hoarded, and many of the cabbages were rotting.
The family of four was crammed into a cramped utility room full of rotten cabbage gangs. The young son was smoked to the point of crying, and the two couples coaxed their son to tears at the same time.
During those days, their family's life was very difficult, and they all started by relying on his wife Wan Xiaomu to work odd jobs in Beijing to support the family.
However, fortunately, the "Youth Song Competition" stipulated that the singers who won the prize that year could appear on the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in the next year. Therefore, in 1993, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala crew arranged for Jiang Tao to sing the song "Chinatown".
After 5 rehearsals, who expected that on the twenty-ninth night of the waxing moon, "Chinatown" was suddenly taken down and replaced by Mao Ning's "The Sound of the Waves".
Jiang Tao was arranged to sing "The Light of the East" with 18 award-winning singers such as Hu Yue and Hang Tianqi, and was also arranged to the most marginal position, and his face could hardly be seen.
In the same year, singer He Jing invited Jiang Tao to sing the song "Like You" together, but Jiang Tao suggested that He Jing sing solo.
As a result, the song "Like You" rushed to the top of the national radio charts, won the silver medal of the CCTV MTV Competition, and became He Jing's classic masterpiece.
But all this brilliance has nothing to do with Jiang Tao, who at that time was still living a "north drifting life" with no place to live. In Beijing, he has no household registration and no unit, and even his son's schooling is a problem.
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Fortunately, after the Spring Festival Gala, many literary and art teams extended an "olive branch" to him.
So, in 1994, he became a soloist in the Beijing Armed Police Cultural and Labor Troupe and began his career as a military singer.
With a stable income and a stable family's life, his singing career also ushered in a peak period.
For many singers, being able to appear on the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala is a supreme honor. Since 1994, Jiang Tao has been on the stage of the CCTV Spring Festival Gala 12 times.
With classic songs such as "YuGong Moving Mountains", "Often Go Home to See" and the song "Happy Birthday" composed for his wife, he became a well-known powerful singer.
The family finally lived a good life, but his wife Wan Xiaomu, because she suffered too much when she was young, looked much older than her husband Jiang Tao.
At an event, the host asked Jiang Tao: "You have been popular for so many years, but your wife is an ordinary housewife, who looks older than you, do you have no opinion?" ”
Jiang Tao replied emphatically, "No, Komaki is my benefactor." When she was covered in oil and working by the stove, the scene that supported my competition touched me all my life, and I only loved her alone in this life! ”
His answer brought tears to his wife, who was sitting next to him. He has been famous for nearly 30 years, but Jiang Tao, who is in the chaotic entertainment industry, has not made a scandal.
The two have been married for 33 years and are still in love as ever, and they are a "model couple" who can not only get rich and noble together, but also share hardships in the entertainment industry.
Jiang Tao said: "Our married life is not as smooth as everyone thinks, but we want to be very firm with each other is the person we want to spend our lives." ”
Everyone thinks I love my wife, but in fact, my wife has given more for me. I can't drive, and my wife acts not only as my driver, but also as my makeup artist, assistant, agent.
Not only did she take good care of my career, but she also raised her son to be excellent. Their son Jiang Yukuo was admitted to the University of Liverpool to study mechanical engineering.
Jiang Tao said: "Many people do not believe that I have experienced this love affair in my life, I can say that I am willing to obey my wife, and I have loved this person all my life." ”
He said: "The proudest thing in my life is to hold the hand of my son with my wife, and to grow old with my son. ”