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Rebels, musical visionaries, but still country girls at heart, the women who built country music took their own paths to success. Whether they formed a sound all their own or sang what they felt even when it wasn’t politically correct, they pushed boundaries to allow room for the scores of women that came after them to take on the great stage of Nashville.

Jean Shepard with Capitol Records in 1952, after drawing the attention of Hank Thompson while singing with the Melody Ranch Girls

JEAN SHEPARD
While few women were making it big on the Nashville scene, Jean Shepard was drawing country music audiences on the West Coast in the 1950’s. Her songs about heartbreak and lost love covered the charts over decades as she entertained fans and influenced generations of artists at the Grand Ole Opry for more than sixty years.

Ollie Imogene Shepard was born November 1933 in the rural town of Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. When she moved to Visalia, California, as a child, she definitely brought her Southern roots with her. In high school, she formed the Melody Ranch Girls, an all-girl group in which Shepard sang and played upright bass. Country music legend Hank Thompson caught wind of their music and was impressed with what he heard. With his recommendation, Shepard signed with Capitol Records in 1952.

Shepard’s first hit, “A Dear John Letter,” partnered her with Ferlin Husky who was also featured on the song’s follow-up, “Forgive Me John”

Capitol paired her with the well-known Speedy West and his steel guitar for her first release, but it didn’t hit the charts. Her second release, however, skyrocketed Shepard’s career as “A Dear John Letter” stayed at number one for the twenty-three weeks it sat on the country music chart. Her success was followed up that same year with “Forgive Me John.” She toured with Ferlin Husky, who had partnered with her on both hits, and the two became rising stars in the country world.

It seemed whatever Shepard sang was destined to be a hit. “A Satisfied Mind,” her first solo, stayed on the charts for twenty-two weeks in 1955. She was invited to appear on the Ozark Jubilee, and joined the Grand Ole Opry the same year. (In 2005 she was the first female artist to have been continuously a member for fifty years.) 1955 was also the year she met fellow inductee Hawkshaw Hawkins. She quickly fell for the handsome singer. The two were married during a performance in Wichita, Kansas, in 1960.

But three years later, in the same plane crash that took three of country music’s biggest names, Shepard lost her husband. Overcome with grief and pregnant with their second child, she stepped away from the stage and the studio to recover. The following year she released her first record to hit the charts since 1959—“Second Fiddle (to an Old Guitar).”

Shepard was a member of the Grand Ole Opry for more than sixty years, her final performance on November 21, 2015 (photo courtesy of Sister Sister Photography)

Through the ’60’s and ’70’s, Shepard released chart hits almost continuously. In the late ’60’s, she married bluegrass singer Benny Birchfield and continued to sing about love that was “Slippin’ Away” and right at the “Tips of My Fingers.” Over the sixty years she graced the Grand Ole Opry stage, Shepard released nearly fifty albums.

Her final performance at the Grand Ole Opry was November 21, 2015. Shepard died the following year on September 25.

Her best-known ballad “Stand By Your Man” in 1968 made Tammy Wynette a household name

TAMMY WYNETTE
Perhaps known as much for her tumultuous relationships with men as she was for her hit “Stand By Your Man,” Tammy Wynette seemed to take her own hardships and turn them into songs. Once known as the “First Lady” of country music, she was never too far from her humble country roots.

Born Virginia Wynette Pugh in 1942 in Itawamba County, Mississippi, the future “First Lady” was raised by her grandparents after her mother moved to work for the military. Her father had died when she was just a baby, but he left behind his love for music, the guitar, and his own recordings. She played his guitar growing up, a welcome break from the work of the cotton fields her grandparents sharecropped.

While she had a short gig singing gospel on local radio as a teenager, Wynette left her dreams behind when she married Euple Byrd in 1959. When the couple divorced in 1965, she supported her three children by working in a beauty shop to barely make ends meet. Down on her luck and hoping for the best, she landed a spot singing on a local television show. It only fueled her appetite for the bigtime, and before long, Wynette was off to Music City.

With a load of guts and a big voice, she pitched some songs to Epic Records’ Billy Sherrill, who signed her and changed her stage name to Tammy Wynette. Under his lead, the song “Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad” landed her a spot in the top ten on the country music charts. “I Don’t Wanna Play House” earned her a Grammy just a year after signing with Epic.

Tammy Wynette’s romance with George Jones earned the couple the moniker “The President and First Lady” of country music

Her songs spoke of what she knew—breakups and mothering, hard life and hard love. But it was her 1968 hit, “Stand By Your Man,” that put her down in history. It was the bestselling single by a female country music star to date, although it also met with criticism since the Women’s Liberation Movement was on the rise. Despite that, the single even broke through the top twenty on pop charts.

Outside of her music, Wynette was known for her troubled history. Married five times, once to country mega-star George Jones, her songs reflected her struggles with love. Her final marriage was to her manager George Richey in 1978. Outside of her rocky relationships, life wasn’t much easier. The country star suffered health problems, death threats, and was kidnapped, beaten, and abandoned in 1978. But through it all, she stayed focused on her family and her music. The year of her twentieth anniversary to Richey, Wynette passed away from a blood clot in her lungs. She left behind her husband, four children, two stepchildren, and nine grandchildren—not to mention a career only befitting someone carrying the title “First Lady of Country Music.”

Harris’s 1981 album Evangeline, a compilation of her previous recordings, went gold, as did her earlier album Roses in the Snow

EMMYLOU HARRIS
The influence of Emmylou Harris reached beyond the traditional country music, honky-tonk crowd. Using her career to bring aspiring musicians to the forefront, she also used her platform to bring country music to a new audience.

Born into a military family in 1947 Birmingham, Harris spent much of her childhood traveling. It probably came as no surprise when as a teenager she left her Southern roots for the big lights of New York City. A lifelong fan of folk music, she hustled tables while singing in clubs. She teamed up with songwriter Tom Slocum, and the two were married in 1969.

Still in New York, Harris signed with a small folk music label that went under the same year she released her debut album, Gliding Bird. The couple packed up and headed back South to try their luck in Nashville. But Music City isn’t an easy place for dreamers, and after the birth of a daughter and a failed marriage, Harris moved in with her parents outside of Washington D.C.

In D.C. she met up with Gram Parsons, ex-bandleader to the Flying Burrito Brothers. Parsons quickly took young Harris under his wing, introducing her to his country-rock style and taking her on tour when the two weren’t recording together. His death in 1973 to an overdose was a hard hit to Harris.

In her forty-year career, Harris has won twelve Grammys, her most recent in 2013 for Best Americana Album

A bit of a musical rebel, or maybe a country genre revolutionary, her time with the Angel Band, and later the Hot Band, never quite fit what most fans had come to know as country music. But while she might have lost a few fans along the way, she brought even more to the genre. Her album Pieces of the Sky put her on the map. She covered songs of music legends like Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, and The Beatles, and selected only the highest skilled musicians to work with. Many, like Ricky Skaggs, went on to have successful careers of their own.

In 1992 Harris became a member of the Grand Ole Opry and served on the Country Music Hall of Fame’s Board of Officers and Trustees for years. She still holds the title of Trustee Emeritus. Harris’s career has spanned more than four decades, and she still draws crowds both within and outside country music. With eleven Grammys under her belt, she added number twelve in 2014. Her collaborations with former bandmate Rodney Crowell on the album Old Yellow Moon won Best Americana Album.

RETURN TO “THE WOMEN WHO BUILT COUNTRY MUSIC: PART ONE”
RETURN TO “THE WOMEN WHO BUILT COUNTRY MUSIC: PART TWO”

HEAR TAMMY WYNETTE SING “STAND BY YOUR MAN”

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Emmylou Harris in a yearbook photo from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where Harris attended on a drama scholarship (photo courtesy of North Carolina Digital Heritage)