Charles Eugene Boone was born in Jacksonville, Florida and raised largely in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1952 he graduated from David Lipscomb High School in Nashville, and he then attended Lipscomb College, a Church of Christ University, also in Nashville. In 1954 he began recording music, and his 1955 version of Fats Domino's "Ain't That a Shame" was a hit. Boone's early career continued to focus on covering R&B songs by black American artists for the white market.
In 1953 he married Shirley Lee Foley, and they went on to have four daughters. In 1957 he had a television show, The Pat Boone Chevy Show, which lasted two years. He began appearing in films in the late 1950s, and he starred in more than 12 Hollywood movies. In the late 1950s, he began writing a series of self-help books for teenagers, one of which, Twixt Twelve and Twenty (1958), was a best-seller.
His musical popularity waned with the British invasion movement, although he continued recording throughout the 1960s. In the late 1960s he left the Church of Christ in which he was raised to become a Pentecostal. In the early 1970s, he founded his own gospel music recording label, Lamb & Lion Records. By the end of the decade he had transitioned from Rock and Roll music to gospel and country exclusively. He toured the country singing with his wife and children under the name The Pat Boone Family. He hosted a music show called "Gospel America" on Trinity Broadcast Network for 10 years. In 2003, he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
He currently hosts a syndicated one-hour gospel oldies music radio show called "The Music of Your Life." He also runs his own recording label, The Gold Label, which publishes new recordings by 1950s stars who can no longer find a place with major labels. He is also a motivational speaker, a television personality, a conservative political commentator and a Christian activist, writer and preacher.
