Exile (American band)
American rock and country music group
Exile, formerly the Exiles, is an American band founded in Richmond, Kentucky, in 1963. The band consists of J.P. Pennington and Les Taylor, both of whom are guitarists and vocalists, along with Sonny LeMaire (bass guitar, vocals), Marlon Hargis (keyboards), and Steve Goetzman (drums). With a founding membership including original lead singer Jimmy Stokley, the band played cover songs and local events in Kentucky for a number of years before becoming a backing band on the touring revue Caravan of Stars. After a series of failed singles on various labels, Exile achieved mainstream success in 1978 with "Kiss You All Over", a number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100. This iteration of the band mostly played soft rock and pop music.
After Stokley was let go due to tensions with producer Mike Chapman, his role as lead vocalist was concurrently assumed by Mark Gray and Taylor. However, Gray departed after three years to begin a solo career. Exile transitioned to country music at the beginning of the 1980s, with Pennington and Taylor as vocalists alongside LeMaire, Hargis, and Goetzman. This lineup was featured on their 1983 album Exile, their first as a country band and first on Epic Records. Between then and 1987, Exile had ten number-one singles on the Billboard Hot Country Singles (now Hot Country Songs) charts, as well as a number one on Top Country Albums with Kentucky Hearts in 1984.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q363873. VIAF identifies the subject as 124480077. The Library of Congress control number is n91115993. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1963, 1978, 1983 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “Exile (American band)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.