No matter how gargantuan Garth Brooks gets, it's worth remembering that it was Randy Travis who put the twang back in country and restored the heart to the heartland's music. On his debut album, 1986's Storms of Life, Travis' honky- tonk paeans to hearth and home rang with uncommon truth and fervor. The singer wrapped them in a stripped-down, hard-country sound (''On the Other Hand,'' ''Diggin' Up Bones'') that didn't shy away from fiddles, steel guitars, and Dobros. What's more, he set it all off with a nasal baritone that took some of its impeccable phrasing from the masters-Haggard, Williams, Frizzell, and Jones. Travis, now 32, put a new voice to an old sound and made it vital again. By his second album, 1987's Always and Forever, which resided at the top of the country charts for 43 weeks, Travis had become the standard-bearer for contemporary country. Even the usually curmudgeonly Roy Acuff was heard to allow, ''Country music needs you.'' ''I came along at the right time with something a little different,'' modestly explains Travis, now married to manager Lib Hatcher. ''Had it not been me, it would have been someone else.'' Maybe so. But Travis' success opened the ; door to all those guys with hats-and they owe him more than a wave as they pass him by on the music charts.
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