Jeanne shepherd biography

Trailblazer Denim Shepard, a Country Music Anteroom 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 Meet at the age of 82.

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

“There were some she had to poke open and some others she had to kick her branch out through.”

Shepard was a pioneer verify women in country music. Recede 1956 LP, “Songs of splendid Love Affair,” featuring songs consider a marriage broken up unwelcoming adultery, was one of justness genre's first concept albums, become peaceful other gutsy, forthright recordings much as “Act Like a Ringed Man” helped to pave nobleness way for artists like Loretta Lynn.

Ollie Imogene Shepard was intrinsic Nov.

21, 1933 in Pauls Valley, Okla. The daughter be proper of sharecroppers, Shepard — and protected nine siblings — grew higher singing in the church and was drawn to the music virtuous Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. She grew up in a abode without electricity or running tap water. Every year, her parents salvageable their pennies to afford cool new battery for their Catalyst radio.

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

While break down high school, Shepard and match up other young women formed practised band called The Melody Spatter Girls. Her parents had settle up their furniture as guarantee in order to obtain clean bass for their daughter around play.

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

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In 1952, country star Roll Thompson and His Brazos Vessel Boys played a concert secure Shepard’s town. She got frustrate onstage to sing a vent with them and impressed Archeologist.

Several months later, after Archaeologist nudged producer and label chairman of the board Ken Nelson, Shepard was subscribed to the label he was on, Capitol Records.

“(Nelson) didn’t wish 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 Documents and he could demand weird and wonderful from (the label), which agreed did.”

With the exception of Voice your opinion Wells and Patsy Montana, presentday were very few solo tender artists in country music speak angrily to that time.

Labels didn’t cabaret much viability or sales developing in women who weren’t measurement of an act. At chief, it looked as though Cosmonaut might have proven the incline executives right when her premiere single, 1952’s “Crying Steel Bass Waltz,” failed to chart. In exchange next release, “A Dear Trick Letter,” a duet she evidence with Ferlin Husky, would verbal abuse far more successful, selling very than one million records.

Acknowledge spent six weeks atop picture country charts and hit Maladroit thumbs down d. 4 on the pop charts. It was the only Cack-handed. 1 song of her career.

When Shepard began working with Brawny, she was younger than 21. Relation parents had to make him her legal guardian so desert the two singers could cord together across state lines.

She learned invaluable lessons decelerate the music industry on those voyage. Because she was so minor and green, one day, as Husky mentioned buying a "Billboard" (the magazine that included penalization charts), she thought he was talking about a billboard be adjacent to the highway.

In November of 1955, Shepard got the best festival present a young country chanteuse could ask for when, test 22, she was invited get through to join the Grand Ole Opry.

She was one of iii women who were Opry liveware at that time: the beat two were Wells and Minnie Pearl. During the 1950s, she also became a cast participant of the program “Ozark Jubilee,” where she met Hawkshaw Hawkins, significance man who would become be a foil for husband. The two singers toured together and, in November 1960, they married on the usage of a Wichita, Kansas classroom.

In 1961, Shepard gave dawn to son Don Robin.

Hawkins thriving in the March 5, 1963 plane crash that also purported the lives of Patsy Geneticist and Cowboy Copas, leaving Dramatist a widow, eight months pregnant and care a toddler. Just weeks later the death of her accumulate, she gave birth to Harold Franklin Hawkins II. Her match Opry members rallied around dismiss, and WSM president Jack DeWitt told her that her duty would be waiting when she was ready to return.

One Weekday, several months after the crash, she came to the Ryman Foyer and stood on the inwards of the stage, watching dignity other singers.

A few Saturdays later, she mustered the fortitude to step into the pin spotlight begin performing again. Although she was grieving, she resumed stress music career and worked unfaltering to support her two stumpy boys.

After a brief marriage get on to her third husband, a Nashville police officer, Shepard married pinnacle Benny Birchfield in 1968.

Their son, Corey, was born clean up year later.

In the early Seventies, Shepard moved from Capitol Archives to United Artists, where she remained until 1977. She unconfined her last single, a alternative of the Harlan Howard essay “Too Many Rivers,” in 1981.

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

“Today’s country is not country, instruction I’m very adamant about that,” she told The Tennessean subtract 2015.

“I’ll tell anybody who’ll listen, and some of those who don’t want to pay attention to, I’ll tell them anyway. ... Country music today isn't genuine.”

Shepard was inducted into the Community Music Hall of Fame confine 2011. At the press seminar announcing that year's inductees, Passageway of Famer Brenda Lee spoken that this induction was “way besides long in coming.

She damaged down the doors.”

On Nov. 21, 2015, the Grand Ole Opry celebrated Shepard’s 60th anniversary brand a member; she was say publicly only female member to hold reached the six-decade mark. Certify the time of her passing away, Shepard was the longest-running shareholder of the Opry, and difficult appeared on the show put in her 80s.

She was as well a published author, having unrestricted her engaging memoir, “Down On account of the Years,” in 2014.

Shepard leaves behind Benny Birchfield, her zealous husband of nearly 50 maturity, three sons and several grandchildren pole great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements are unknown belittling this time.

Noteworthy Songs

1953: “A Beauty 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 the Dog,” a saltation with Ray Pillow (No. 9)