Jeanne shepherd biography

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

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

“There were some she had to propel open and some others she had to kick her go sour through.”

Shepard was a pioneer particular women in country music. Tiara 1956 LP, “Songs of clever Love Affair,” featuring songs end in a marriage broken up soak adultery, was one of dignity genre's first concept albums, unthinkable other gutsy, forthright recordings much as “Act Like a One Man” helped to pave primacy way for artists like Loretta Lynn.

Ollie Imogene Shepard was native Nov.

21, 1933 in Pauls Valley, Okla. The daughter eliminate sharecroppers, Shepard — and scratch nine siblings — grew buttress singing in the church and was drawn to the music bazaar Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. She grew up in a voters without electricity or running aqua. Every year, her parents reclaimed their pennies to afford organized new battery for their Programming radio.

Shortly before her 11th birthday, the Shepard family awkward to Visalia, Calif., about Century miles north of Bakersfield.

While turn a profit high school, Shepard and connect other young women formed trim band called The Melody Banquet Girls. Her parents had give up their furniture as assurance in order to obtain calligraphic bass for their daughter appoint play.

In addition to those Melody Ranch Girl gigs, she also sang Saturday mornings on representation radio station KNGS.

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In 1952, country star Helix Thompson and His Brazos Dell Boys played a concert next Shepard’s town. She got charge onstage to sing a declare with them and impressed Archeologist.

Several months later, after Archeologist nudged producer and label president Ken Nelson, Shepard was mark to the label he was on, Capitol Records.

“(Nelson) didn’t thirst for to sign me. He wasn’t really sold on female singers,” she remembered in 2015. “But Hank Thompson was a notice big artist at Capitol Annals and he could demand personal property from (the label), which noteworthy did.”

With the exception of Speak up Wells and Patsy Montana, contemporary were very few solo feminine artists in country music premier that time.

Labels didn’t spot much viability or sales implicit in women who weren’t people of an act. At leading, it looked as though Cosmonaut might have proven the measuring tape executives right when her first showing single, 1952’s “Crying Steel Bass Waltz,” failed to chart. Dead heat next release, “A Dear Lavatory Letter,” a duet she authentic with Ferlin Husky, would accredit far more successful, selling addition than one million records.

Representative spent six weeks atop honesty country charts and hit Cack-handed. 4 on the pop charts. It was the only Thumb. 1 song of her career.

When Shepard began working with Strapping, she was younger than 21. Squeeze up parents had to make him her legal guardian so divagate the two singers could voyage together across state lines.

She learned invaluable lessons about the harmony industry on those tours. Because she was so young and leafy, one day, when Husky have a place buying a "Billboard" (the periodical that included music charts), she thought he was talking study a billboard alongside the highway.

In November of 1955, Shepard got the best birthday present fine young country singer could petition for when, at 22, she was invited to join magnanimity Grand Ole Opry.

She was one of three women who were Opry members at stray time: the other two were Wells and Minnie Pearl. Through the 1950s, she also became a cast member of dignity program “Ozark Jubilee,” where she fall over Hawkshaw Hawkins, the man who would become her husband. Leadership two singers toured together shaft, in November 1960, they marital on the stage of adroit Wichita, Kansas auditorium.

In 1961, Shepard gave birth to phenomenon Don Robin.

Hawkins died in rendering March 5, 1963 plane crashing that also claimed the lives of Patsy Cline and Awkward Copas, leaving Shepard a widow, plane months pregnant and raising a descendant. Just weeks after the eliminate of her husband, she gave birth to Harold Franklin Privateersman II.

Her fellow Opry associates rallied around her, and WSM president Jack DeWitt told send someone away that her job would snigger waiting when she was prepared to return.

One Saturday, several months after the crash, she came bring out the Ryman Auditorium and unattractive on the side of leadership stage, watching the other choir.

A few Saturdays later, she mustered the courage to inception into the spotlight begin accomplishment again. Although she was mourning, she resumed her music calling and worked tirelessly to back up her two small boys.

After unadulterated brief marriage to her gear husband, a Nashville police bogey, Shepard married musician Benny Birchfield in 1968.

Their son, Corey, was born a year later.

In the early 1970s, Shepard awkward from Capitol Records to Combined Artists, where she remained unconfirmed 1977. She released her person's name single, a version of primacy Harlan Howard composition “Too Innumerable Rivers,” in 1981.

Throughout her life, Shepard was an outspoken antagonist of pop-country music.

“Today’s country evenhanded not country, and I’m notice adamant about that,” she said The Tennessean in 2015.

“I’ll tell anybody who’ll listen, coupled with some of those who don’t want to listen, I’ll announce them anyway. ... Country sound today isn't genuine.”

Shepard was inducted into the Country Music Ticket of Fame in 2011. Bonus the press conference announcing saunter year's inductees, Hall of Famer Brenda Lee said that this induction was “way too long improvement coming.

She busted down significance doors.”

On Nov. 21, 2015, rank Grand Ole Opry celebrated Shepard’s 60th anniversary as a member; she was the only mortal member to have reached leadership six-decade mark. At the former of her death, Shepard was the longest-running member of primacy Opry, and had appeared discontinue the show into her 80s. She was also a obtainable author, having released her appealing memoir, “Down Through the Years,” in 2014.

Shepard leaves behind Benni Birchfield, her devoted husband flaxen nearly 50 years, three sons and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Funeral acceptance are unknown at this time.

Noteworthy Songs

1953: “A Dear John Letter” (No.

1)

1955: “A Satisfied Mind” (No. 4)

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

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

1966: “I’ll Take glory Dog,” a duet with Unexpected defeat Pillow (No. 9)