Jean Shepard - 2010 Inductee

  
Date of Birth 11/21/1933
Place of Birth Pauls Vally, Oklahoma
Along with charting forty-five hits from 1953-1978, Paul's Valley native Jean Shepard is noted for several firsts in the field of country music. Along with Kitty Wells and Pattie Page, Jean was one of the first women to break the country music barrier in the 1959s. Her first #1, a Korean War song entitled "A Dear John Letter" topped the charts for twenty-three weeks and crossed over to the Top 5 charts, selling some ten million records in 1953. She was one of the first women to join the Grand Ole Opry in 1955, and is now the longest continuous member of the country music institution. Jean was also the first female in country music to sell a million records, and was the first woman in country music to record a concept album. Jean's 1956 Songs, all written by her, from a single woman’s point of view on one side, while on the other side portrayed the wife's perspective.
Born November 21, 1933, to parents Hoit and Alla Mae Shepard, who raised eleven children in rural Oklahoma, Ollie Imogene Shepard was an avid listener to the Grand Ole Opry and Bob Wills' radio broadcast over KVOO in Tulsa. She learned to sing by listening to Jimmie Rodgers records on a wind-up Victrola. After Living in Hugo, Jean and her family relocated to Visalia, California, near Bakersfield, at the conclusion of World War II. At the age of fourteen, she and several friends for the Melody Ranch Girls, an all-female western swing band. Jean sang and played upright bass, an instrument that overwhelmed her five feet, one inch height, and almost overwhelmed her family with her mother and father hocking every stick of furniture in their home to pay for the bass which cost $350. Due to her notability as a radio performer in California’s San Joaquin Valley, she came to the attention of Hank Thompson, who made it possible for her first recording contract with Capitol.
The same year Jean joined the Grand Ole Opry (1955), she helped launch the Ozark Jubilee telecast on ABC television as part of Red Foley's cast, where she remained until 1957, and was named Top Female Singer by Cash Box magazine in 1959. In 1963, her husband Hawkshaw Hawkins was killed in a plane crash, which also killed Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas. In 1963, Jean moved to United Artist where she enjoyed several hits, but it was “Slippin’ Away” that earned her a Grammy Award nomination in 1973 for Best Country Female Vocalist of the year. In 1975, Jean recorded a tribute to her late husband Hawkshaw Hawkins, :”Two Little Boys,” written by their sons, Don Robins (named after Don Gibson and Marty Robbins), and Harold Franklin Hawkins II after his father. During the 1980s and 1990s Jean continued to tour, especially in the U.K., where she has been quite popular for many decades. In 1996, two collections of Jeans recordings were released: the Country Music’s Honky Tonk Heroine: Classic Capitol Recordings, 1952-1964, a 24-track compilation of Jean’s #1 Hits; and the Bear Family five-disc box set, The Melody Ranch Girl, which included all 151 tracks recorded on capitol from 1952 to 1964.
Since 1968 Jean has been married to bluegrass guitarist Benny Brichfield, and continues to perform on the Grand Ole Opry as well as in Branson, Missouri. As a testament to Jean’s status among her peers, the late Jim Reeves, perhaps country’s smoothest singer of the Nashville Sound era said about Jean, “All the girl singers should sound like Jean Shepard. She always hits her notes, holds them, and wraps them around an audience like nobody else can.
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