Is Chris Isaak Married, Who is His Wife? His Biography and Net Worth

Chris Isaak is a rock musician who has risen from a low and humble background to a global personality. He is known for the hit songs Wicked Game and Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing. The theme of his songs revolves around love, heartache, and loss, which makes him the darling of his fans. He has also starred in several movies and won awards. In his career, which began in the ’80s, he has released several studio albums, but his fans wonder about his marital status and family life. You can find out all about that if you read on…

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Chris Isaak Biography

Joe Isaak and Dorothy Vignolo gave birth to a son on 26 June 1956, whom they named Christopher Joseph Isaak. He was born in the working-class town of Stockton, California. Growing up was hard on the family because his father, Joe, was a forklift driver and his mother, Dorothy, worked in a potato chip production company. Chris Isaak, the youngest of the three boys (the others were Nick and Jeff Issak), developed a passion for music and taught himself to play the guitar.

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His family couldn’t afford to buy new things, so he settled for pretty used stuff, and when he accompanied his mother to such stores, he bought used rock’n’roll records. Among Joe’s early influences for his enduring sound, today are Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, and Hank Williams.

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He attended Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in north Stockton and was the class captain for three years. In his senior year, he became a student president. Along with them, he was valedictorian of his senior class when he graduated in 1974. After high school, he enrolled at San Joaquin Delta Community College before transferring to the University of the Pacific, Stockton, where he received his bachelor’s degree in English and Communication Arts in 1981. During his studies, Isaak spent some time in Japan on an exchange program, and it was at this time that he decided to pursue a career in music.

After graduating from college, Chris Isaak formed his first music band, which included James Calvin Wilsey as lead guitarist, Rowland Salley as a bassist, and Kenney Dale Johnson on drums while he was the vocalist and also played the rhythm guitar. The band was formed in 1981 and was called Silvertone. Chris Isaak is of mixed descent. He is Black Sea German on his father’s side and Italian-American on his mother’s side. However, his nationality is that of an American born in Stockton, California, and he belongs to the white ethnic group.

Chris Isaak Career

Chris Isaak’s music band started out singing in clubs and bars to sell themselves, but his career path changed when he met Erik Jacobsen who helped him flourish in his career. His first album was named after his music group Silvertone. It was released in 1985 after he got a record deal with Warner Bros. Records with the help of Jacobsen. And although the album was widely acclaimed, it did not go down well with sales figures. His second, self-titled album, Chris Isaak, was released in 1987, and like the first album, it did so well in the charts and went gold in the US. His music began to grow and he was privileged to be the opening act on the tour of Roy Orbison, who had one of his early musical influences.

In 1989 Isaak released his third album Heart Shaped World, which broke the backbone of his fame. One of the songs on the album, Wicked Game, became a world hit when renowned film producer and director David Lynch used the soundtrack in his 1991 film Wild at Heart. DJ Lee Chesnut, who is a big fan of Lynch’s films, decided to play the vocal version of the song on his radio station and it became the most requested song on the radio station and thus also on other radio stations in the USA. And so, three years after the release of the song (album), the journey to realize its true potential began, rising to amazing #6 and #10 in the US and UK Billboard pop charts in 1991.

The stunning music video for the song was orchestrated by director Herb Ritts and it became a hit and helped make Chris Isaak a sex symbol. He shot the video with supermodel Helena Christensen and held her on a beach with an erotic bond and sensual chemistry, creating an aura of love and romance. The song Don’t Make Me Dream About You, which can also be heard on the album Heart Shaped World, contributed to the album being awarded platinum several times in the USA. Other albums by Chris Isaak that followed were San Francisco Days (1993) and the Grammy-nominated Forever Blue (1995), which included the Grammy-nominated single “Somebody’s Crying”. The album also featured the single “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing”. There were also Baja Sessions (1996), Speak of the Devil (1998), Always Got Tonight (2002), Christmas (2004), Mr. Lucky (2009), Beyond the Sun (2011) and First Comes the Night (2015).

When he became successful in the music scene, Chris Isaak ventured into acting, and his first work came in 1988 with a small role in the crime drama-comedy “Married to the Mob” in which he played the role of a clown. He then played again for Jonathan Demme in his work Silence of the Lambs (1991) and the following year in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Feuerlauf mit mir (1992). He also played the role of the father of the main character in Little Buddha (1993). In 2001 he played as himself together with his band members in the Chris Isaak Show, which was aired until 2004. Isaak also appeared in John Waters’s A Dirty Shame (2004) and The Informers (2009).

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Net Worth

Chris Isaak has had a very successful music career, and it can be said that he also makes his contribution to acting. He has had so much success in his music career and has also received so many awards and nominations. He has received the Stockton Arts Commission STAR Award in recognition of the hard work of his hometown of Stockton, California. Isaak’s net worth is estimated at $21 million.