The audience erupted in applause and refused to let her leave the stage until she had sung three more songs.
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There I stood, after 26 years of supposedly learning how to conduct myself in front of an audience, with my mouth open two miles wide and a glassy stare in my eyes. And when she did that trick of breaking her voice, it jarred me out of my trance enough to realize I'd forgotten to get off the stage. One foot started patting rhythm as though she was stomping out a prairie fire but not another muscle in that little body even as much as twitched. I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. Foley later recounted the moments following her introduction: Foley was as transfixed as everyone else who heard the huge voice coming from the tiny girl and immediately agreed to let her perform " Jambalaya" on stage that night, unrehearsed. An Augusta disc jockey persuaded Foley to hear her sing before the show. Her break into big-time show business came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 to appear on a Swainsboro radio station in order to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. The family soon returned to Georgia, however, this time to Augusta and Lee appeared on the show The Peach Blossom Special on WJAT-AM in Swainsboro.īrenda Lee at the Granada, Sutton, April 1962 Lee performed with Skinner at the record shop on two Saturday programs broadcast over Newport, Kentucky radio station WNOP. In 1955, Grayce Tarpley was remarried to Buell "Jay" Rainwater, who moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked at the Jimmy Skinner Music Center. During that time, she appeared regularly on the country music show "TV Ranch" on WAGA-TV in Atlanta she was so short, the host would lower a stand microphone as low as it would go and stand her up on a wooden crate to reach it. Her father died in 1953, and by the time she turned ten, she was the primary breadwinner of her family through singing at events and on local radio and television shows. The reward was a live appearance on an Atlanta radio show, Starmakers Revue, where she performed for the next year. At age six, she won a local singing contest sponsored by local elementary schools. Lee's voice, pretty face and stage presence won her wider attention from the time she was five years old. Both her mother and sister remembered taking her repeatedly to a local candy store before she turned three one of them would stand her on the counter and she would earn candy or coins for singing. By the time she was two, she could whistle the melody of songs she heard on the radio. Though her family did not have indoor plumbing until after her father's death, they had a battery-powered table radio that fascinated Brenda as a baby. Her mother came from an under-educated working-class family in Greene County, Georgia. Standing 5 ft 7 inches (170 cm), he was an excellent left-handed pitcher and spent 11 years in the United States Army playing baseball. Lee's father was a farmer's son in Georgia's red-clay belt. Life centered around her parents finding work, their family, and the Baptist church, where she began singing solos every Sunday.
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As a child, she shared a bed with her brother and sister in a series of three-room houses without running water. Her family was poor, often living hand-to-mouth. Lee attended grade schools wherever her father found work, primarily between Atlanta and Augusta. Lee was born in the charity ward of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. Brenda currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.īrenda Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley on December 11, 1944, to parents Annie Grace (née Yarbrough) and Reuben Lindsey Tarpley. She is also a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. She is a member of the Rock and Roll, Country Music and Rockabilly Halls of Fame. Lee's popularity faded in the late 1960s as her voice matured, but she continued a successful recording career by returning to her roots as a country singer with a string of hits through the 1970s and 1980s. She is perhaps best known in the United States for her 1960 hit "I'm Sorry", and 1958's " Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", a United States holiday standard for almost 60 years.Īt 4 ft 9 inches tall (approximately 145 cm), she received the nickname Little Miss Dynamite in 1957 after recording the song "Dynamite" and was one of the earliest pop stars to have a major contemporary international following. She sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 47 US chart hits during the 1960s, and is ranked fourth in that decade surpassed only by Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Ray Charles.
Brenda Lee (born Brenda Mae Tarpley December 11, 1944) is an American performer and the top-charting solo female vocalist of the 1960s.