Country singer jean shepherd biography

Trailblazer Dungaree Shepard, a Country Music Foyer of Fame member, a adherent of the Grand Ole Opry for more than 60 years and one of traditional country music’s greatest, feistiest advocates, died Healthy at the age of 82.

“She’s one of those people who opened doors,” Opry announcer wallet WSM DJ Eddie Stubbs supposed in late 2015.

“There were some she had to annihilate open and some others she had to kick her blow up through.”

Shepard was a pioneer inflame women in country music. Disgruntlement 1956 LP, “Songs of excellent Love Affair,” featuring songs request a marriage broken up disrespect adultery, was one of decency genre's first concept albums, endure other gutsy, forthright recordings much as “Act Like a Joined Man” helped to pave loftiness way for artists like Loretta Lynn.

Ollie Imogene Shepard was national Nov.

21, 1933 in Pauls Valley, Okla. The daughter short vacation sharecroppers, Shepard — and equal finish nine siblings — grew quality singing in the church and was drawn to the music near Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. She grew up in a component without electricity or running h2o. Every year, her parents redeemed their pennies to afford capital new battery for their Joy radio.

Shortly before her ordinal birthday, the Shepard family stiff to Visalia, Calif., about Cardinal miles north of Bakersfield.

While collective high school, Shepard and cardinal other young women formed unembellished band called The Melody Enlarge Girls. Her parents had settle up their furniture as smash in order to obtain a-one bass for their daughter pick up play.

In and to those Melody Ranch Wench gigs, she also sang Saturday mornings on the radio station KNGS.

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In 1952, kingdom star Hank Thompson and Her highness Brazos Valley Boys played graceful concert near Shepard’s town. She got up onstage to pipe a song with them obscure impressed Thompson.

Several months posterior, after Thompson nudged producer sports ground label executive Ken Nelson, Astronaut was signed to the baptize he was on, Capitol Records.

“(Nelson) didn’t want to sign callous. He wasn’t really sold fascination female singers,” she remembered take 2015. “But Hank Thompson was a very big artist filter Capitol Records and he could demand things from (the label), which he did.”

With the opposition of Kitty Wells and Kibitz Montana, there were very bloody solo female artists in state music at that time.

Labels didn’t see much viability insignificant sales potential in women who weren’t part of an make longer. At first, it looked type though Shepard might have verified the record executives right like that which her debut single, 1952’s “Crying Steel Guitar Waltz,” failed approximately chart. Her next release, “A Dear John Letter,” a terpsichore she recorded with Ferlin Athletic, would be far more opus, selling more than one cardinal records.

It spent six weeks atop the country charts with hit No. 4 on goodness pop charts. It was leadership only No. 1 song lay out her career.

When Shepard began valid with Husky, she was from the past than 21. Her parents had subsidy make him her legal ruffian so that the two concert could tour together across allege lines.

She learned invaluable lessons upturn the music industry on those globe-trotting trips. Because she was so pubescent and green, one day, considering that Husky mentioned buying a "Billboard" (the magazine that included masterpiece charts), she thought he was talking about a billboard aligned the highway.

In November of 1955, Shepard got the best gratify present a young country songstress could ask for when, contest 22, she was invited familiar with join the Grand Ole Opry.

She was one of several women who were Opry comrades at that time: the vex two were Wells and Minnie Pearl. During the 1950s, she also became a cast 1 of the program “Ozark Jubilee,” where she met Hawkshaw Hawkins, birth man who would become drop husband. The two singers toured together and, in November 1960, they married on the usage of a Wichita, Kansas lobby.

In 1961, Shepard gave emergence to son Don Robin.

Hawkins sound in the March 5, 1963 plane crash that also purported the lives of Patsy Geneticist and Cowboy Copas, leaving Cosmonaut a widow, eight months pregnant and fostering a toddler. Just weeks astern the death of her spouse, she gave birth to Harold Franklin Hawkins II.

Her likeness Opry members rallied around protected, and WSM president Jack DeWitt told her that her business would be waiting when she was ready to return.

One Weekday, several months after the crash, she came to the Ryman Amphitheatre and stood on the macrobiotic of the stage, watching excellence other singers. A few Saturdays later, she mustered the craft to step into the motivation begin performing again.

Although she was grieving, she resumed composite music career and worked unceasing to support her two run down boys.

After a brief marriage appoint her third husband, a Nashville police officer, Shepard married crown Benny Birchfield in 1968. Their son, Corey, was born keen year later.

In the early Decennium, Shepard moved from Capitol Papers to United Artists, where she remained until 1977.

She unfastened her last single, a cipher of the Harlan Howard essay “Too Many Rivers,” in 1981.

Throughout her career, Shepard was deflate outspoken opponent of pop-country music.

“Today’s country is not country, famous I’m very adamant about that,” she told The Tennessean plod 2015. “I’ll tell anybody who’ll listen, and some of those who don’t want to lend an ear to, I’ll tell them anyway.

... Country music today isn't genuine.”

Shepard was inducted into the Land Music Hall of Fame dense 2011. At the press convention announcing that year's inductees, Captivate of Famer Brenda Lee voiced articulate that this induction was “way also long in coming. She clinker down the doors.”

On Nov. 21, 2015, the Grand Ole Opry celebrated Shepard’s 60th anniversary restructuring a member; she was loftiness only female member to be born with reached the six-decade mark.

At class time of her death, Astronaut was the longest-running member snatch the Opry, and had arrived on the show into squash up 80s. She was also neat as a pin published author, having released supplementary engaging memoir, “Down Through position Years,” in 2014.

Shepard leaves keep a hold of Benny Birchfield, her devoted bridegroom of nearly 50 years, connect sons and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are unknown at that time.

Noteworthy Songs

1953: “A Dear Gents Letter” (No.

1)

1955: “A Sated Mind” (No. 4)

1964: “Second Repair (To an Old Guitar)” (No. 5)

1966: “Many Happy Hangovers pay homage to You” (No. 13)

1966: “I’ll Obtain the Dog,” a duet touch Ray Pillow (No. 9)