Having sold over 100 million records globally, Lee is one of the most successful American artists of the 20th century. Lee was the second woman ever to top the Billboard Hot 100 (after Connie Francis) when her song “I’m Sorry” reached #1 in 1960. Her U.S. success in the 1960s earned her recognition as Billboard's Top Female Artist of the Decade and one of the four artists who charted the most singles, behind Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Ray Charles. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, four NARM Awards, three NME Awards and five Edison Awards.[4] She is the first woman to be inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In 2023, she was named by Rolling Stone as one of the greatest singers of all time.[5]
Early life and education
Brenda Mae Tarpley was born on December 11, 1944[2] in the charity ward of Grady Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia to parents Annie Grayce (née Yarbrough; 1921–2006) and Ruben Lindsey Tarpley (1909–1953).[6][7] She weighed only 4 pounds 11 ounces at birth. Lee attended primary schools wherever her father found work, mainly between Atlanta and Augusta. Her family was poor. Growing up, she shared a bed with her brother and sister in a series of three-room houses without running water. Life centered on her parents finding work, their family and the Baptist church, where she began singing solos every Sunday.[2][8]
Lee's father was a farmer's son in Georgia's red-clay belt.[9] Standing 5 ft 7 in (170 cm), he was an excellent left-handed pitcher and played baseball while serving for 11 years in the United States Army. Her mother came from a working class family in Greene County, Georgia.[citation needed]
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.[2] 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.[citation needed]
Lee's voice, face and stage presence won her wider attention from a young age. At age five, she won first place at her school's talent show contest, where she sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Her performance received positive reviews, leading her to make regular appearances on local radio and television shows.[10]
Her father died in 1953 (when she was 8 years old) in a construction accident and by the time she turned ten, she was the primary breadwinner of her family by singing at events and on local radio and television shows.[11] During that time, she appeared regularly on the country music show TV Ranch on WAGA-TV in Atlanta but 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. In 1955, Grayce Tarpley married Buell "Jay" Rainwater, who moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked at the Jimmie Skinner Music Center. Lee performed with Skinner at the record store on two Saturday programs broadcast over Newport, Kentucky, radio station WNOP. The family soon returned to Georgia but this time to Augusta and Lee appeared on the show The Peach Blossom Special on WJAT-AM in Swainsboro.[12]
National exposure and stardom
Lee's breakthrough came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 ($334 in 2022 value[13]) 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. An Augusta disc jockey persuaded Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley did and agreed to let her 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. [14]
On March 31, 1955, the 10-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,[15] she nevertheless 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 "Jambalaya", backed with "Bigelow 6-200". Lee's second single featured 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)".[16]
Neither of the 1956 releases charted, but her first issue in 1957, "One Step at a Time", written by Hugh Ashley, became a hit in both the pop and country fields. Her next hit, "Dynamite", coming out of a 4-foot 9-inch frame, led to her lifelong nickname, Little Miss Dynamite.[2]
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 with "Johnny One Time".[17]
Biggest successes: 1958–1966
Lee presented with a Gold record for "I'm Sorry", cover of Cash Box, August 27, 1960
In 1958, when Lee 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 and raucous sax soloing by Nashville icon Boots Randolph. 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.[19] However, over subsequent years, it eventually sold more than five million copies. Since 2017, the song has appeared at the end of each year on the Billboard Hot 100, having spent (as of December 9, 2023) 54 weeks on the Hot 100, peaking at number 1 in 2023.
Billboard ad for "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", November 21, 1960
In 1960, Lee recorded her signature song, "I'm Sorry". However, the record initially was withheld for months before its release due to concern that the 15-year-old Lee would not understand what she was singing about in the love song. The song became one of the biggest hits of 1960, reaching the #1 chart position in the U.S. and #12 in the U.K.[20][21] It was her first gold single and was nominated for a Grammy Award.[22] 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" was finally 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.[23]
Her last top-ten single on the pop charts in the United States (besides the reappearance each November–December since 2017 of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree") was 1963's "Losing You" (No. 6).
In 1964, "As Usual" reached No. 12 in the US and No. 5 in the UK and "Coming on Strong" peaked at No. 11 in the US.[citation needed] Also in 1964, "Is It True" peaked at No. 17 in both the US and the UK. Featuring Big Jim Sullivan (guitar), Jimmy Page (guitar), and Bobby Graham (drums), it was her only hit single recorded in London, England, and was produced by Mickie Most. The slide guitar and background singers were overdubbed in Nashville. It was recorded at Decca Records' number two studio at their West Hampstead complex, as was the UK B-side, a version of Ray Charles' 1959 classic cut, "What'd I Say?" which was not released in North America.[24] "Is It True" was composed by noted British songwriting team Ken Lewis and John Carter, who were also members of UK hitmakers the Ivy League.[25]
Lee was popular in the United Kingdom from early in her career. She performed on British television in 1959, before she had achieved much pop recognition in the United States. Her first hit single in the United Kingdom was "Sweet Nothin's", which peaked at number four on the UK Singles Chart in the spring of 1960. She subsequently had a UK hit (in 1961) with "Let's Jump the Broomstick", a rockabilly number recorded in 1959, which had not charted in the United States, but reached No. 12 in the UK.[1]
Lee had two top ten hits in the UK that were not released as singles in her native country: the first, "Speak to Me Pretty" peaked at No. 3 in May 1962 and was her greatest hit in the UK by chart placing, swiftly followed by "Here Comes That Feeling", which reached No. 5 in the summer of 1962. The latter was issued as the B-side to "Everybody Loves Me But You" in the United States (which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100); however, "Here Comes That Feeling" also made an appearance in the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 89, despite its B-side status in the US.[citation needed]
Lee also toured in the Republic of Ireland in 1963 and appeared on the front cover of the Irish dancing and entertainment magazine Spotlight in April that year.[citation needed]
During the early 1970s, Lee re-established herself as a country music artist. In a 1996 memoir, television producer Sam Lovullo stated that Lee's 1972 appearance on his variety showHee Haw had been instrumental to her comeback.[26] Lee earned a string of top ten hits in the United States on the country charts, the first of which was 1973's "Nobody Wins", which reached the top five that spring and became her last Top 100 pop hit, peaking at No. 70. The follow-up, the Mark James composition "Sunday Sunrise", reached No. 6 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).
2000–2016: Autobiography and Country Music Hall of Fame
Lee's autobiography, Little Miss Dynamite: The Life and Times of Brenda Lee, was published by Hyperion in 2002 (ISBN0-7868-6644-6).[2]
Lee's most recent album release was a gospel collection in 2007. She no longer tours and rarely performs. Since the millennium, she has been involved with her work for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. On October 4, 2000, Lee inducted fellow country music legends Faron Young and Charley Pride into the Country Music Hall of Fame.[citation needed] Lee is often called upon to announce the annual inductees to the Country Music Hall of Fame and then officially present them with their membership medallions at a special ceremony every year. The most recent inductees announced by Lee were Randy Travis, Charlie Daniels and Fred Foster in 2016.[27]
2019–present: "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" 65th anniversary
Since Billboard modified its recurrent rules in 2012, Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" has regularly returned to the Billboard Hot 100 since 2015.[28] On the Hot 100 chart dated December 21, 2019, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" reached a new peak of #3 in the United States with 37.1 million streams and 5,000 digital sales sold.[29] The following week it moved up to #2,[30] where it remained for a second week.[30] From 2019 to 2022, the song has re-peaked at #2, blocked from the top position by Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You".[31]
In November 2023, to celebrate the song's 65th anniversary, Lee released a music video featuring her lip-synching to the original recording at a house party with Tanya Tucker and Trisha Yearwood.[32] Lee has also joined social media platform TikTok to promote the song, where she posts videos reminiscing about her song's history and success.[33]
On the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated December 9, 2023, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" topped the Hot 100 for the first time in the United States becoming Lee's third #1 hit and first since her 1960 single, "I Want to Be Wanted". At 78, Lee became the oldest female artist and oldest artist overall to top the Hot 100, feats formerly held by Cher and Louis Armstrong, respectively.[34] The week following, she held the number one spot, which also meant she surpassed her own age record, having turned 79 during the week ending December 16, 2023.[35] Following two few weeks off number one, on the week ending January 6, 2024, she returned to number one for an additional week.[36]
A Lee approved AI-generated Spanish language version "Noche Buena y Navidad" appeared on October 25, 2024.[37]
In December 2024, Spotify revealed that "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" is among the Top 10 most streamed holiday songs of all time, [38] reaching more than a billion downloads.[39][40] The Recording Industry Association of America also certified "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" that month for 7× Platinum for US sales of 7 million copies of the digital single.[41]
Also in December 2024, Lee was honored at the Tennessee State Capitol, where the song was named the Official Holiday Song of Tennessee. Legislation recognizing the song in this way was filed by Tennessee House of Representative member Jason Powell in December 2023. It passed the state legislature and was signed into law by Governor Bill Lee.[42]
Legacy and recognition
On September 26, 1986, Lee was installed in the Atlanta Music Hall of Fame 5th Annual Awards Ceremony held at the Raddison Inn, Atlanta, Georgia. She was named among many other recording artists including: Riley Puckett, Gid Tanner, Dan Hornsby, Clayton McMichen and Boots Woodall. Lee reached the final ballot for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and 2001 without success but was finally voted into the Hall of Fame in 2002.[43][44]
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.[45] In 1997, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame[46] and is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame[4] and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.[47]
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 Award.[48]
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Lee at number 161 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.[5]
Lee met Charles Ronald "Ronnie" Shacklett in November 1962 at a concert by Bo Diddley and Jackie Wilson hosted at Nashville's Fairgrounds Coliseum. They married less than six months later on April 24, 1963.[49][50] Lee and Shacklett have two daughters and three grandchildren.[51]
Lee is the cousin-by-marriage (by way of her mother's second marriage) to singer Dave Rainwater from The New Christy Minstrels.[52]
^Lovullo, Sam; Eliot, Marc (1996). Life in the Kornfield: My 25 Years at Hee Haw. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group. ISBN1-57297-028-6. p. 126: Brenda Lee ... faded from the charts, until Hee Haw brought her back. Her appearance on our show was the key to reestablishing her career.
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