| Brenda Lee |
| Birth name |
Brenda Mae Tarpley |
| Also known as |
Little Miss Dynamite |
| Born |
December 11, 1944 (1944-12-11) (age 64) |
| Origin |
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
| Genres |
pop, rockabilly, country |
| Occupations |
Singer |
| Years active |
1955–present |
| Labels |
Decca, MCA Nashville |
| Associated acts |
Connie Francis, Skeeter Davis, Ricky Nelson, Lesley Gore, Red Foley |
| Website |
Brenda Lee.com |
Brenda Mae Tarpley (born December 11, 1944), better known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music with equal conviction and power; and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis.[1] She is best known for her 1960 hit "I'm Sorry," and 1957's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," a perennial US holiday standard for 50 years.
At 4 ft 9 inches tall, 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.
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 80s. She is a member of the Rock and Roll, Country Music and Rockabilly halls of fame, and currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
Biography
Early years
Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley in the charity ward of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces at birth. She attended grade schools wherever her father found work, primarily in the corridor between Atlanta and Augusta. Her family was poor, living hand-to-mouth; she shared a bed with her two siblings in a series of three-room houses without running water. Life centered on her parents' finding work, their extended family, and the Baptist Church (where she sang solos every Sunday).[2]
Lee's father, Ruben Tarpley, was the son of a hardscrabble farmer in Georgia's red-clay belt. Although he stood only 5 ft 7 inches, he was an excellent left-handed pitcher and spent 11 years in the US Army playing baseball. Her mother, Annie Grayce Yarbrough, had a similar background of an uneducated working class family in Greene County, Georgia.
Lee was a musical prodigy. Although 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. By the time she was two, she could whistle the tune of songs she heard on the radio.[3] 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.
Child performer
Lee's voice, pretty face and stage presence won her wider attention from the time she was five years old. At age six, she won a local singing contest sponsored by local elementary schools. The reward was a live appearance on an Atlanta radio show, Starmakers Revue, where she performed for the next year.
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. In 1955, Grayce Tarpley remarried to Buell "Jay" Rainwater, who moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio where he worked at the Jimmy Skinner Music Center. Lee performed with Skinner at the record shop on two Saturday programs broadcast over Newport, Kentucky radio station WNOP-AM. 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. The show's producer, Sammy Barton, rechristened the little singer Brenda Lee, believing that Tarpley was too difficult to remember.
National exposure and stardom
Her break into big-time show business came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 to appear on a Swainsboro radio station to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. An Augusta DJ convinced Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley was as transfixed as everyone else who heard the huge voice coming from the tiny girl and immediately agreed to let her to perform "Jambalaya" on stage that night, unrehearsed. Foley later recounted the moments following her introduction:
"I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. 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. 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. 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".
The audience erupted in applause and refused to let her leave the stage until she had sung three more songs. On March 31, 1955, the 11-year-old made her network debut on Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri. Although her five-year contract with the show was broken by a 1957 lawsuit brought by her mother and her manager,[4] she made regular appearances on the program throughout its run.
Less than two months later—on July 30, 1956—Decca Records offered her a contract, and her first record was "Jambayala" backed with "Bigelow 6-200." Lee's second single would feature two novelty Christmas tunes: "I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus," and "Christy Christmas." Though she turned 12 on December 11, 1956, both of the first two Decca singles credit her as "Little Brenda Lee (9 Years Old)."
Neither of the 1956 releases charted, but her first issue in '57, "One Step at a Time," became a hit in both the pop and country fields. Her next hit, "Dynamite," coming out of a 4 ft 9 inch frame, led to her lifelong nickname, Little Miss Dynamite.
Lee first attracted attention performing in country music venues and shows; however, her label and management felt it best to market her exclusively as a pop artist, the result being that none of her best-known recordings from the 1960s were released to country radio, and despite her country sound, with top Nashville session people, she did not have another country hit until 1969, and "Johnny One Time."
Biggest hits: 1958-1965
Lee achieved her biggest success on the pop charts in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s with rockabilly and rock and roll-styled songs. Her biggest hits included "Jambalaya," "Sweet Nothin's" (number four) (written by country musician Ronnie Self), "I Want to Be Wanted" (number one), "All Alone Am I" (number three) and "Fool #1" (number three). She had more hits with the more pop-based songs "That's All You Gotta Do" (number six), "Emotions" (number seven), "You Can Depend on Me" (number six), "Dum Dum" (number four), 1962's "Break It To Me Gently" (number 2), "Everybody Loves Me But You" (number six), and "As Usual" (number 12).
The biggest-selling track of Lee's career was a Christmas song. In 1958, when she was 13, producer Owen Bradley asked her to record a new song by Johnny Marks, who had had success writing Christmas tunes for country singers, most notably "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (Gene Autry) and "A Holly, Jolly Christmas" (Burl Ives). Lee recorded the song, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," in July with a prominent twanging guitar part by Hank Garland. Decca released it as a single that November, but it sold only 5,000 copies, and did not do much better when it was released again in 1959. However, it eventually sold more than five million copies.
In 1960, she recorded her signature song, "I'm Sorry", which hit number one on the Billboard pop chart. It was her first gold single and was nominated for a Grammy. Even though it was not released as a country song, it was among the first big hits to use what was to become the Nashville sound - a string orchestra and legato harmonized background vocals. "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" got noticed in its third release a few months later, and sales snowballed; the song remains a perennial favorite each December and is the record with which she is most identified by contemporary audiences.
Her last top ten single on the pop charts was 1963's "Losing You" (number 6), while she continued to have other chart songs such as her 1966 song "Coming On Strong" and "Is It True?" in 1964. The latter, featuring Jimmy Page on guitar, was her only hit single recorded in London, England and was produced by Mickie Most.
International fame
Lee was popular in the United Kingdom early in her career. She toured the UK in 1959, before she had achieved much pop recognition in the US. Her 1961 rockabilly release "Let's Jump the Broomstick" did not chart in the US, but went to number 12 in the UK. She then had two top 10 hits in the UK that were not released as singles in her native country: "Speak To Me Pretty" peaked at number three in early 1962, followed by "Here Comes That Feeling".
Lee enjoys one distinction unique among successful American singers; her opening act on a UK tour in the early 1960s was a then-little-known beat group from Liverpool, England: The Beatles.[5][6]
Later career
During the early 1970s, Lee re-established herself as a country music artist, and earned a string of top ten hits on the country charts. The first was 1973's "Nobody Wins," which reached the top five that spring and became her last Top 100 pop hit, peaking at number 70. The follow-up, the Mark James composition "Sunday Sunrise," reached number six on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Singles chart that October. Other major hits included "Wrong Ideas" and "Big Four Poster Bed" (1974); and "Rock On Baby" and "He's My Rock" (both 1975).
After a few years of lesser hits, Lee began another run at the top ten with 1979's "Tell Me What It's Like." Two follow-ups also reached the Top 10 in 1980: "The Cowboy and the Dandy" and "Broken Trust" (the latter featuring vocal backing by The Oak Ridge Boys). A 1982 album, The Winning Hand, featuring Lee along with Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, was a surprise hit, reaching the top ten on the U.S. country albums chart. Her last well-known hit was 1985's "Hallelujah, I Love Her So," a duet with George Jones.
Recent years
Over the ensuing years, Lee continued to record and perform around the world, previously cutting records in four different languages. In 1992, she recorded a duet ("You’ll Never Know") with Willy DeVille on his album Loup Garou. Today, she continues to perform and tour.
On October 4, 2000, Lee inducted fellow country music legend Charley Pride into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Her autobiography, Brenda Lee: Little Miss Dynamite, was published by Hyperion in 2002 (ISBN 0-7868-6644-6).
Family
Although Lee's songs have often centered on lost loves, and although she did lose her father at a young age, her marriage to Ronnie Shacklett in 1963 has endured. He was able to deal with the notoriously rapacious music industry and is credited with ensuring her long-term financial success. They have two daughters, Jolie and Julie (who was named for Patsy Cline's daughter) and three grandchildren, Taylor, Jordan and Charley.
Recognition
Lee reached the final ballot for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and 2001 without being inducted, but was voted into the hall for 2002. To date, the 11 years between her 1990 and 2001 ballot appearances is the largest gap of this nature in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Celebrating over 50 years as a recording artist, in September 2006 she was the second recipient of the Jo Meador-Walker Lifetime Achievement award by the Source Foundation in Nashville. In 2007, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.
In 2008, her recording of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" marked 50 years as a holiday standard, and in February 2009, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave Lee a Lifetime Achievement Grammy.
References in popular culture
Chuck Berry wrote a song about Lee on the album St. Louis to Liverpool. She was also immortalized in Golden Earring's 1973 hit "Radar Love": "Radio's playing some forgotten song / Brenda Lee's 'Coming on Strong'." She was also remembered as a heroine to Burton Cummings on his self-titled 1970s album in the song "Dream of a Child," including the closing line, "I love Brenda Lee / Brenda Lee loves me / yeah...".
"Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" was heard in the 1991 movie Home Alone. "I'm Sorry" can be heard in the 1991 movie The Fisher King and in the 1993 movie This Boy's Life.
"I Wonder," released in 1963, was the song playing at Colleen's funeral in the episode "The Cost of Living" in Season 3 of the ABC television show Lost. The episode originally aired on November 1, 2006.
Kelly Clarkson appeared as Brenda Lee on two episodes of the NBC series American Dreams.
Discography
Notes
- ^ "Brenda Lee: the Lady, the Legend". Brenda Lee roductions. http://www.brendalee.com/pages/biography.html. Retrieved 2009-04-10.
- ^ Lee remembers the church as not being truly "Primitive Baptist", but the congregation did engage in foot-washing and performed baptisms in a river.
- ^ Oral remembrance of Grayce Rainwater, recounted in Little Miss Dynamite.
- ^ Lee, Brenda; Oermann, Robert K.; Clay, Julie (2002), Little Miss Dynamite: the Life and Times of Brenda Lee, Hyperion, ISBN 0-7868-8558-0 .
- ^ Argyrakis, Andy (2007-07-05). "Reluctant Legend". Christianity Today. http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2007/brendalee-0507.html. Retrieved 2008-04-02. "I also have a poster of The Beatles signed by each one of them because they used to open for me in England before they were a success."
- ^ Wooding, Dan. "'Little Miss Dynamite' returns to her Gospel roots with a little help from some of her best friends". Good News Daily. http://www.goodnewsdaily.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5094. Retrieved 2008-04-02. "While in England, I had met this group of young men and they toured with me throughout Germany and parts of England. They were then called The Silver Beatles and they later became known as The Beatles."
References
External links
