American Idol Hopeful Kristy Lee Cook Sold a Horse to Pay for Her Plane Ticket to the Audition

Blues legend Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil to get his guitar skills.

Kristy Lee Cook--our Northwest hopeful for American Idol--didn't have to sell anything quite so dear to pay for a ticket to the Philly auditions, but parting with a horse she'd trained can't have been fun.

(Unless to rural folk like her--she's from Selma, Oregon--training and selling horses is commonplace. We don't know from farm life.)

Kristy failed in her first Idol tryout in July, in San Diego, and decided that she wanted to give it another shot the next month in Philly--but she didn't have money for a ticket.

So she sold the horse for $3,000, according to her father, who relayed the story to Jim Moore of the Grants Pass Daily Courier (the full article is behind a pay gate, unfortunately).

Her father further explained that, in San Diego, she'd sung Christina Aguilera song. Simon and crew didn't cotton to it. She decided they were wrong.

In her Philadelphia audition, she sang "Amazing Grace," which seems far better suited to her countryfied vocal stylings.

The audition recaps resume tonight--they'll be showing the San Diego auditions. Maybe we'll see Kristy's first, failed attempt?

American Idol airs at 8pm tonight on KCPQ-13