Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
    Nostalgia Central
    • Home
    • Blog
      • Lists
      • Playlists
    • Television
      • TV by Decade
        • TV – 1950s
        • TV – 1960s
        • TV – 1970s
        • TV – 1980s
        • TV – 1990s
      • Comedy
      • Drama
      • Kids TV
      • Variety
      • News & Sport
      • Advertisements
    • Music
      • Music by Decade
        • Music – 1950s
        • Music – 1960s
        • Music – 1970s
        • Music – 1980s
        • Music – 1990s
      • Artists – A to K
        • Artists – A
        • Artists – B
        • Artists – C
        • Artists – D
        • Artists – E
        • Artists – F
        • Artists – G
        • Artists – H
        • Artists – I
        • Artists – J
        • Artists – K
      • Artists – L to Z
        • Artists – L
        • Artists – M
        • Artists – N
        • Artists – O
        • Artists – P
        • Artists – Q
        • Artists – R
        • Artists – S
        • Artists – T
        • Artists – U
        • Artists – V
        • Artists – W
        • Artists – X
        • Artists – Y
        • Artists – Z
      • Artists – 0 to 9
      • Genres
      • Music on Film & TV
      • One-Hit Wonders
      • Online Radio
    • Movies
      • Movies by Decade
        • Movies – 1950s
        • Movies – 1960s
        • Movies – 1970s
        • Movies – 1980s
        • Movies – 1990s
      • Movies – 0 to 9
      • Movies – A to K
        • Movies – A
        • Movies – B
        • Movies – C
        • Movies – D
        • Movies – E
        • Movies – F
        • Movies – G
        • Movies – H
        • Movies – I
        • Movies – J
        • Movies – K
      • Movies – L to Z
        • Movies – L
        • Movies – M
        • Movies – N
        • Movies – O
        • Movies – P
        • Movies – Q
        • Movies – R
        • Movies – S
        • Movies – T
        • Movies – U
        • Movies – V
        • Movies – W
        • Movies – X
        • Movies – Y
        • Movies – Z
    • Pop Culture
      • Fads
      • Toys & Games
      • Fashion
      • Decor
      • Food & Drink
      • People
      • Technology
      • Transport
    • Social History
      • 1950s Year by Year
      • 1960s Year by Year
      • 1970s Year by Year
      • 1980s Year by Year
      • 1990s Year by Year
      • Events
    Nostalgia Central
    Home»Music»Artists - A to K»Artists - B
    Artists - B Music - 1950s Music - 1960s 6 Mins Read

    Brenda Lee

    Share
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Reddit Email

    Born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Atlanta, Georgia, on 11 December 1944, Brenda Lee is rumoured to have taken to the road with a singing group at the age of five to help support her family.

    Certainly, she admitted to playing shows in Atlanta sports arenas and school-houses well before her tenth birthday, and to having her own radio spot on a station in Augusta, Georgia.

    Her discovery through the radio show for country star Red Foley in 1956 led to the Tarpley family moving to Springfield, Missouri.

    Brenda’s subsequent appearances on Foley’s Ozark Jubilee TV show were well received and brought a recording contract with Decca in Nashville. Her first disc, cut in July 1956, was a rocked-up version of Hank Williams‘ Jambalaya.

    It became a regional country hit on the strength of Brenda’s TV appearances and her ‘novelty’ status – she was, after all, still only 11 years old.

    This was not remarkable enough for Decca, who billed her at first as ‘Little Brenda Lee – nine years old’. Her publicity, rather more accurately, dubbed her ‘Little Miss Dynamite’.

    In 1957 Brenda Lee made the charts. One Step At A Time made #43 in the Hot Hundred and #15 in the country charts, paving the way for a crossover pop-rock career.

    brendalee_377

    There followed several early attempts to hit with out-and-out rockers like Let’s Jump The Broomstick and Dynamite and for some years Brenda was a member of the rock’n’roll package show circuit, taking her school books with her.

    Dynamite, with a driving beat behind Brenda’s rasping, bluesy voice was a minor pop hit. However, her producer at Decca’s Nashville studios, Owen Bradley, soon realised that her voice was even more suited to anguished ballads.

    Bradley was pioneering a new sound in the late Fifties, with strings and vocal choruses built around heartfelt storylines; this was the ‘Nashville sound’. Country singers were the raw material for Bradley’s experiments, and child prodigies with adult voices were a godsend.

    In 1959, Sweet Nothin’s made #4 on the US Hot Hundred and the following year I’m Sorry – a deeply felt ballad that had been originally issued as a flipside – went to #1.

    On disc, Brenda Lee sounded like an adult; in live performance, however, that world-worn voice could be seen to come from a little girl who looked harmlessly cute. In 1959 Brenda took her act to Paris, where Le Figaro found it hard to believe she was as young as she looked.

    brendalee_005

    The paper’s reviewer felt she must be a 32-year-old midget, not a 15-year-old. Her career blossomed because of her image as the rocker in the party dress.

    1960 was the first year of superstardom. Five Brenda Lee titles hit the pop charts and the tiny young redhead was soon a fixture in the fan magazines, telling all about her favourite colours and the best flavour of ice-cream.

    Years later, she reflected: “I’d do a show and it seemed like there’d be 82 acts on the bill of those rock packages, each earning over a thousand bucks a night. That was big money. And it was a fun time. There was a lot of comradeship. Trouble was, I was always the baby, the little sister. It was tough when Fabian and Duane Eddy became my pals and I wanted them to flirt with me but all they did was tell me their troubles.”

    The year ended with a European tour and Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree, a bouncy bopper that was to become a perennial yuletide hit.

    The early Sixties were years of consolidation, in which Brenda Lee established herself at home, in Europe and in South America. During this time, she notched up at least one large-scale hit each year:

    Fool Number One charted in 1961, then All Alone Am I in 1962 and As Usual in 1963.

    brendalee_009

    Whereas Sweet Nothin’s had been a simmering rocker, the later hits contained fewer elements of rock’n’roll and more of the Nashville sweetenings.

    Brenda’s vocal style remained tough, though, and even when the Mersey sound forged a new era in rock Brenda Lee retained enough fans to put her into the Hot Hundred in 1967.

    Eventually, the hits stopped coming and Lee retired to family life for a while.

    She recalled: “At that time I was neither fish nor fowl. The company didn’t know what to do with me. The business had become less friendly and I didn’t fit. I wouldn’t change my style even if I could, so I preferred to take a rest. I was having problems with my throat, and besides, I didn’t have the kind of ego that said I had to be on the charts all the time. I knew I was good. I knew I was a success. I knew I could come back.”

    There was no thought of going into other fields. Brenda had made a movie in 1962, The Two Little Bears, and she had tried stage musicals. She gave all this up, concluding, ‘I’m a singer, not an actress’.

    In 1973 Brenda Lee made a renewed assault on the country music world, with a top-selling album, Brenda, following a Top Five country single, Nobody Wins, penned by the then up-and-coming Kris Kristofferson.

    brendalee16

    She commented: “I feel the key to success is good songs, and country writers are good writers. The first song I ever learned was a country song, Hank Williams‘ Mansion On The Hill. But I look all around. When I was a kid I used to play with the black kids on our street and I’d go to church with them and pick up elements of gospel music. I guess that’s why I sing so oddly, why I’ve never been quite rock or quite country or quite pop.”

    Brenda’s country push was presaged during her ‘retirement’ years by occasional hits like Johnny One Time in 1969 and If This Is Our Last Time in 1971, and was sustained through the Seventies with Sunday Sunrise (1973) and The Cowgirl And The Dandy (1974).

    These recordings were all made in Nashville, all – apart from one record on Elektra – for the Decca label (now re-named MCA), and all with the same basic approach.

    The reasons for Brenda Lee’s success are two-fold. She generally chose very strong material to record, and she applied to that material a husky, bluesy voice that belied her tiny 4-foot 11-inch frame and little girl looks.

    With 48 US hit records and countless international successes between 1956 and 1967, Brenda Lee was undoubtedly one of the major female stars of the rock’n’roll era.

    Related Posts

    • Wanda Jackson
      Wanda Jackson
      Wanda Jackson started her career as a dare. Her church friends dared her to audition for a local radio station's…
    • Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers
      Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers
      One day in 1955 Richard 'Ritchie' Barrett heard The Premiers, a young multi-racial vocal group from the Bronx, singing on…
    • Sonny Boy Williamson
      Sonny Boy Williamson
      Alec Rice Miller was born into a sharecropper's family around 1897 in Mississippi and travelled from town to town trying…
    • Bobby Vinton
      Bobby Vinton
      After US Army service, band leader's son Bobby Vinton put together a group and landed a spot down the bill…
    • Chantelles, The
      Chantelles, The
      Led by Riss Chantelle (formerly known as Iris Lana), British girl group The Chantelles cut some high-quality material in the mid-1960s, made…
    • Kim Weston
      Kim Weston
      Kim Weston was born Agatha Natalie Weston on 30 December 1939, in Detroit, Michigan, and started singing in the church…
    • Noeleen Batley
      Noeleen Batley
      Australian Noeleen Batley was born on Christmas Day 1944 and made her show business debut singing on a Sydney radio station…
    • Lee Dorsey
      Lee Dorsey
      Born in New Orleans on 4 December 1926, Lee Dorsey moved with his family to Oregon when he was 10.…

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest WhatsApp Reddit Email
    Previous ArticleBrenda Holloway
    Next Article Brian Cadd

    Comments are closed.

    Follow us
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • YouTube
    You May Also Like
    • Fatal Attraction (1987)
      Michael Douglas made two films in 1987 that hit a nerve and […]
    • Django (1966)
      Traditional westerns were typically sedate affairs, with the odd […]
    • Middle Of The Road
      Scottish quartet Middle Of The Road formed in 1970 – they […]
    • Pillbox Hats
      Jackie Kennedy is said to have popularised the pillbox hat (so […]
    • Beatniks
      “Don’t fret cat, it’s all bells. We got no […]
    • Hawk
      1 9 6 6 (USA) 17 x 60 minute episodes This ABC/Columbia crime […]
    Comments Box SVG iconsUsed for the like, share, comment, and reaction icons

    OUR LATEST FACEBOOK POSTS

    edition.cnn.com/2023/01/30/entertainment/cindy-williams-dead/index.html

    More sad news 😢
    ... See MoreSee Less

    Link thumbnail

    'Laverne & Shirley' star Cindy Williams dead at 75 | CNN

    edition.cnn.com

    Cindy Williams, the dynamic actress known best for playing the bubbly Shirley Feeney on the beloved sitcom "Laverne & Shirley," has died, according to a statement from her family, provided to CNN by a...
    1 day ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 1
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 0

    Comment on Facebook

    www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64442824 ... See MoreSee Less

    Link thumbnail

    Television frontman Tom Verlaine dies at 73

    www.bbc.co.uk

    His band rose to fame in the 1970s New York punk scene, scoring UK hits including Marquee Moon.
    3 days ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 0
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 0

    Comment on Facebook

    www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64418847 ... See MoreSee Less

    Link thumbnail

    Mr Blobby costume sells for more than £62,000 on eBay

    www.bbc.co.uk

    The character, made famous by BBC show Noel's House Party, had been in storage since the 1990s.
    4 days ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 0
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 0

    Comment on Facebook

    Put some beefiness into your mid-week menu with these recipe ideas published in a Birds Eye advertisement from the Radio Times on 30 September 1965.

    Put some "beefiness into your mid-week menu" with these recipe ideas published in a Birds Eye advertisement from the "Radio Times" on 30 September 1965. ... See MoreSee Less

    1 week ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 3
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 1

    Comment on Facebook

    They were awful. An overpowering savoury flavour that lingered in your mouth for hours. Heaven knows what unmentionable parts of a bull went into making them 😳

    More sad news 😪

    ... See MoreSee Less

    Link thumbnail

    US rock legend David Crosby dies aged 81

    www.bbc.co.uk

    Crosby, who co-founded both the Byrds and Crosby, Stills and Nash, had been ill for some time.
    2 weeks ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 0
    • Shares: 1
    • Comments: 0

    Comment on Facebook

    This is what they promised us when I was a kid. What happened? 

All I have is 700 channels of rubbish on the TV in High Def, TikTok, Facebook and a phone I can take photographs with . . .

    This is what they promised us when I was a kid. What happened?

    All I have is 700 channels of rubbish on the TV in High Def, TikTok, Facebook and a phone I can take photographs with . . .
    ... See MoreSee Less

    2 weeks ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 54
    • Shares: 22
    • Comments: 7

    Comment on Facebook

    I thought we would have moving pavements by now when I was a kid 😂

    Totally agree!!!

    The new Tesla, 4.6 next century.

    We got transvestite story hour instead

    We appear to be going backwards

    There's actually a very good David Graeber essay on this very topic: thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit

    The Jetsons strike again.

    View more comments

    Renowned Australian singer Renee Geyer is dead at 69 following complications from hip surgery. Such a fabulous voice. RIP😢

https://nostalgiacentral.com/music/artists-l-to-z/artists-r/renee-geyer/

    Renowned Australian singer Renee Geyer is dead at 69 following complications from hip surgery. Such a fabulous voice. RIP😢

    nostalgiacentral.com/music/artists-l-to-z/artists-r/renee-geyer/
    ... See MoreSee Less

    2 weeks ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 0
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 1

    Comment on Facebook

    That is so sad to hear 😥 rest in peace 🙏 🕊 xx

    Gina Lollobrigida: Italian screen star dies at 95
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64292026

    Gina Lollobrigida: Italian screen star dies at 95
    www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64292026
    ... See MoreSee Less

    2 weeks ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 4
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 1

    Comment on Facebook

    😍😍😍😍

    Vale Jeff Beck. Dead at 78. 😢

    ... See MoreSee Less

    Link thumbnail

    Jeff Beck: British guitar legend dies aged 78

    www.bbc.co.uk

    One of rock's most influential guitarists, he was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice.
    3 weeks ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 1
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 0

    Comment on Facebook

    Hi everyone. Were in the process of moving www.nostalgiacentral.com to new dedicated servers to better cope with the volumes of traffic. Please ignore any SSL security errors you may receive when visiting the site over the next 24 hours while the move completes.

    Hi everyone. We're in the process of moving www.nostalgiacentral.com to new dedicated servers to better cope with the volumes of traffic. Please ignore any SSL security errors you may receive when visiting the site over the next 24 hours while the move completes. ... See MoreSee Less

    3 weeks ago
    View on Facebook
    · Share
    Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linked In Share by Email
    View Comments
    • Likes: 5
    • Shares: 0
    • Comments: 2

    Comment on Facebook

    Ironically, this post has jumped off the page at me. You'll probably get most traffic today because everyone will want to see what they might be missing!

    Martin Platt

    Load more
    Please note


    Nostalgia Central covers the period 1950 to 1999 and contains some words and references which reflect the attitudes of those times and which may be considered culturally sensitive, offensive or inappropriate today.
    Popular Tags
    1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1975 1976 Action Figures Amicus Arcade games Australia Beach movies Beatles Blaxploitation Board games Britpop Canada Crime Disney Doo-Wop Elvis Presley Girl groups Glam Goth Hammer Heavy Metal Irwin Allen Labels Merseybeat Mod revival Motown New Romantic New Wave NWOBHM Oi! One-hit wonders Power Pop Pub rock Punk Radio Scotland Ska Soul music Sport Surf music
    Search Nostalgia Central
    Copyright © 1998, 2023 Nostalgia Central
    • About Nostalgia Central
    • Contact
    • FAQ

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.