She was 20 years old.
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21, 1933, Shepard and her family moved to Visalia, California, when she was a teenager.
Grand Ole Opry star Jean Shepard, a fierce practitioner and defender of traditional country music, died Sunday (Sept. 25) in Nashville at the age of 82. While her first single was not a hit, she hit it out of the park with her second, A Dear John Letter, with Ferlin Husky. The song stayed at the top of the country chart for six weeks.
She released a total of 73 singles to the Hot Country Songs chart. “Country music today isn’t genuine”. Included in a live version on the 1995 compilation, Honky Tonk Heroine, Shepard prefaces the performance by saying, “It’s something we don’t do very often, and very good even, for that matter”, and closes by adding, “Maybe it wasn’t very good but it was bad loud, wasn’t it?” Shepard’s first single for the label, “Crying Steel Guitar Waltz”, failed to chart.
Possessed of a strong and assertive voice – and an attitude to match – she continued to rise in musical prominence via such Top 5 and Top 10 hits as “Forgive Me John” (also with Husky), “A Satisfied Mind“, “Beautiful Lies“, “I Thought of You”, “Second Fiddle (To an Old Guitar)”, “I’ll Take the Dog” (with Ray Pillow), “If Teardrops Were Silver“, “Then He Touched Me” and “Slippin’ Away“. Almost a decade later she had what became her last Top Five country hit, “Slippin’ Away“. Shepard released 24 albums between 1956 and 1981. “Mom has been called home this morning and is now at peace”, the singer’s son Hawkshaw Hawkins Jr. said in a statement quoted by Billboard Magazine. She was eight months pregnant with his son when Hawkins died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed Patsy Cline and country star Cowboy Copas. In 1968, she married singer and musician Benny Birchfield.
In 1974, Shepard became the president of the newly formed Association of Country Entertainers, formed in response to Olivia Newton-John winning CMA Female Vocalist of the Year in 1974. I love country music. “I’ll tell anybody who’ll listen, and some of those who don’t want to listen, I’ll tell them anyway”. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
That led to an invitation to join the Grand Ole Opry in 1955.
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Forthrightness became a keystone for Shepard and later in life, manifested itself with her blunt criticisms of modern country music. “It’s hard enough to be a woman in this field – and it really is – for my generation; I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her in the Fifties”. At the time, she was one of only three women on the Opry on their own, along with Kitty Wells and Minnie Pearl. “That she refused to compromise her artistry, to succumb to the changing sounds and trends, has been a big inspiration”.
