Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Rolling Stone	[2]

Eventually is the second solo album that Paul Westerberg released after the breakup of The Replacements.

The album started out in Atlanta with producer Brendan O'Brien. Although those sessions produced good results—the leadoff single, "Love Untold", among them—Westerberg and O'Brien parted ways. O'Brien was pressed for time, and Westerberg needed more time to write enough songs to fill out a full album. Westerberg regrouped with Lou Giordano.^{[citation needed]}

The song "Good Day" was written for late Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson. It references "Hold My Life", a track from the album Tim.

Track listing[link]

All songs written by Paul Westerberg, except where noted

1. "These Are the Days" – 3:58
2. "Century" – 4:35
3. "Love Untold" – 4:16
4. "Ain't Got Me" – 3:25
5. "You've Had It with You" – 3:11
6. "MamaDaddyDid" – 2:57
7. "Hide n Seekin'" – 3:06
8. "Once Around the Weekend" – 3:56
9. "Trumpet Clip" – 3:17
10. "Angels Walk" – 3:22
11. "Good Day" – 4:19
12. "Time Flies Tomorrow" – 4:33

Japanese edition bonus track

13. "Make Your Own Kind of Music" (Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil) – 3:34

Personnel[link]

• Paul Westerberg – guitar, vocals, organ, bass guitar, piano, saxophone
• Brendan O'Brien – guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
• Tommy Stinson – bass guitar and trombone on "Trumpet Clip"^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (December 2011)

Alexander Draper "Alex" Wolff (born November 1, 1997) is an American child actor and musician, currently playing in Nat and Alex Wolff. He is best known for his role as himself on the Nickelodeon series The Naked Brothers Band, also starring his older brother, Nat Wolff; the series was created by the boys' mother, Polly Draper. He also guest starred on Monk, in the episode Mr. Monk Goes Camping. He is also the boy played in the beginning of Fall Out Boy's music video for "The Take Over, The Break's Over"

Wolff was born in Manhattan, New York. He is the son of actress and screenwriter Polly Draper and jazz pianist and composer Michael Wolff, and is the younger brother of singer-songwriter, keyboardist, and actor Nat Wolff. His maternal grandfather is venture capitalist William Henry Draper III. His father is Jewish and his mother is Christian.^[1] Wolff got his middle name from his mother's maiden name of Draper.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Alex Wolff at the Internet Movie Database
• Alex Wolff on Myspace

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This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (May 2010)

Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman plays his Selmer alto saxophone during a performance at The Hague, 1994.
Background information
Born	(1930-03-19) March 19, 1930 (age 82)[1][2] Fort Worth, Texas, United States
Genres	Free jazz, free funk, avant-garde jazz, jazz-rock
Occupations	Musician, composer
Instruments	Alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, violin, trumpet
Years active	1958–present
Website	ornettecoleman.com

Ornette Coleman (born March 19, 1930)^[1][2] is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s.

Coleman's timbre is easily recognized: his keening, crying sound draws heavily on blues music. His album Sound Grammar received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Coleman was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas, where he began performing R&B and bebop initially on tenor saxophone. Seeking a way to work his way out of his home town, he took a job in 1949 with a Silas Green from New Orleans traveling show and then with touring rhythm and blues shows. After a show in Baton Rouge, he was assaulted and his saxophone was destroyed.^[3]

He switched to alto, which has remained his primary instrument, first playing it in New Orleans after the Baton Rouge incident. He then joined the band of Pee Wee Crayton and travelled with them to Los Angeles. He worked at various jobs, including as an elevator operator, while still pursuing his musical career.

Even from the beginning of Coleman's career, his music and playing were in many ways unorthodox. His approach to harmony and chord progression was far less rigid than that of bebop performers; he was increasingly interested in playing what he heard rather than fitting it into predetermined chorus-structures and harmonies. His raw, highly vocalized sound and penchant for playing "in the cracks" of the scale led many Los Angeles jazz musicians to regard Coleman's playing as out-of-tune. He sometimes had difficulty finding like-minded musicians with whom to perform. Nevertheless, pianist Paul Bley was an early supporter and musical collaborator.

In 1958, Coleman led his first recording session for Contemporary, Something Else!!!!: The Music of Ornette Coleman. The session also featured trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins, bassist Don Payne and Walter Norris on piano.^[4]

[edit] The Shape of Jazz to Come

Coleman was very busy in 1959. His last release on Contemporary was Tomorrow Is the Question!, a quartet album, with Shelly Manne on drums, and excluding the piano, which he would not use again until the 1990s. Next Coleman brought double bassist Charlie Haden – one of a handful of his most important collaborators – into a regular group with Haden, Cherry, and Higgins. (All four had played with Paul Bley the previous year.) He signed a multi-album contract with Atlantic Records who released The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959. It was, according to critic Steve Huey, "a watershed event in the genesis of avant-garde jazz, profoundly steering its future course and throwing down a gauntlet that some still haven't come to grips with."^[5] While definitely – if somewhat loosely – blues-based and often quite melodic, the album's compositions were considered at that time harmonically unusual and unstructured. Some musicians and critics saw Coleman as an iconoclast; others, including conductor Leonard Bernstein and composer Virgil Thomson regarded him as a genius and an innovator.^[6]

Coleman's quartet received a lengthy – and sometimes controversial – engagement at New York City's famed Five Spot jazz club. Such notable figures as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Leonard Bernstein and Lionel Hampton were favorably impressed, and offered encouragement. (Hampton was so impressed he reportedly asked to perform with the quartet; Bernstein later helped Haden obtain a composition grant from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.) Opinion was, however, divided. Trumpeter Miles Davis famously declared Coleman was "all screwed up inside" (although this comment was later recanted) and Roy Eldridge stated, "I'd listened to him all kinds of ways. I listened to him high and I listened to him cold sober. I even played with him. I think he's jiving baby."^[7]

On the Atlantic recordings, Scott LaFaro sometimes replaces Charlie Haden on double bass and either Billy Higgins or Ed Blackwell features on drums. These recordings are collected in a boxed set, Beauty Is a Rare Thing.^[4]

Part of the uniqueness of Coleman's early sound came from his use of a plastic saxophone. He had first bought a plastic horn in Los Angeles in 1954 because he was unable to afford a metal saxophone, though he didn't like the sound of the plastic instrument at first.^[8] Coleman later claimed that it sounded drier, without the pinging sound of metal. In more recent years, he has played a metal saxophone.^[9]

[edit] Free Jazz

In 1960, Coleman recorded Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation, which featured a double quartet, including Cherry and Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, Haden and LaFaro on bass, and both Higgins and Blackwell on drums. The record was recorded in stereo, with a reed/brass/bass/drums quartet isolated in each stereo channel. Free Jazz was, at nearly 40 minutes, the lengthiest recorded continuous jazz performance to date, and was instantly one of Coleman's most controversial albums. The music features a regular but complex pulse, one drummer playing "straight" while the other played double-time; the thematic material is a series of brief, dissonant fanfares. As is conventional in jazz, there are a series of solo features for each member of the band, but the other soloists are free to chime in as they wish, producing some extraordinary passages of collective improvisation by the full octet.

Coleman intended "Free Jazz" simply to be the album title, but his growing reputation placed him at the forefront of jazz innovation, and free jazz was soon considered a new genre, though Coleman has expressed discomfort with the term. Among the reasons Coleman may not have entirely approved of the term 'free jazz' is that his music contains a considerable amount of composition. His melodic material, although skeletal, strongly recalls the melodies that Charlie Parker wrote over standard harmonies, and in general the music is closer to the bebop that came before it than is sometimes popularly imagined. (Several early tunes of his, for instance, are clearly based on favorite bop chord changes like "Out of Nowhere" and "I Got Rhythm".) Coleman very rarely played standards, concentrating on his own compositions, of which there seems to be an endless flow. There are exceptions, though, including a classic reading (virtually a recomposition) of "Embraceable You" for Atlantic, and an improvisation on Thelonious Monk's "Criss-Cross" recorded with Gunther Schuller.

1960s[link]

   Ornette Coleman
Enjoy Jazz Festival, Heidelberg, October 2008

After the Atlantic period and into the early part of the 1970s, Coleman's music became more angular and engaged fully with the jazz avant-garde which had developed in part around Coleman's innovations.^[4]

His quartet dissolved, and Coleman formed a new trio with David Izenzon on bass, and Charles Moffett on drums. Coleman began to extend the sound-range of his music, introducing accompanying string players (though far from the territory of Charlie Parker with Strings) and playing trumpet and violin (which he played left-handed) himself. He initially had little conventional technique and used the instruments to make large, unrestrained gestures. His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development on trumpet and violin. Haden would later sometimes join this trio to form a two-bass quartet.

Between 1965 and 1967 Coleman signed with Blue Note Records and released a number of recordings starting with the influential recordings of the trio At the Golden Circle Stockholm.

In 1966, Coleman was criticized for recording The Empty Foxhole, a trio with Haden, and Coleman's son Denardo Coleman – who was ten years old. Some^[who?] regarded this as perhaps an ill-advised piece of publicity on Coleman's part and judged the move a mistake. Others, however,^[who?] noted that despite his youth, Denardo had studied drumming for several years. His technique – which, though unrefined, was respectable and enthusiastic – owed more to pulse-oriented free jazz drummers like Sunny Murray than to bebop drumming. Denardo has matured into a respected musician, and has been his father's primary drummer since the late 1970s.

Coleman formed another quartet. A number of bassists and drummers (including Haden, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones) appeared, and Dewey Redman joined the group, usually on tenor saxophone.

He also continued to explore his interest in string textures – from the Town Hall concert in 1962, culminating in Skies of America in 1972. (Sometimes this had a practical value, as it facilitated his group's appearance in the UK in 1965, where jazz musicians were under a quota arrangement but classical performers were exempt.)

In 1969, Coleman was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame

Later career[link]

Coleman performing in Toronto in 1982

Coleman, like Miles Davis before him, took to playing with electrified instruments. Albums like Virgin Beauty and Of Human Feelings used rock and funk rhythms, sometimes called free funk. On the face of it, this could seem to be an adoption of the jazz fusion mode fashionable at the time, but Ornette's first record with the group, which later became known as Prime Time (the 1976 Dancing in Your Head), was sufficiently different to have considerable shock value. Electric guitars were prominent, but the music was, at heart, rather similar to his earlier work. These performances have the same angular melodies and simultaneous group improvisations – what Joe Zawinul referred to as "nobody solos, everybody solos" and what Coleman calls harmolodics – and although the nature of the pulse has altered, Coleman's own rhythmic approach has not.

Some critics^[who?] have suggested Coleman's frequent use of the vaguely-defined term harmolodics is a musical MacGuffin: a red herring of sorts designed to occupy critics overly-focused on Coleman's sometimes unorthodox compositional style.

Jerry Garcia played guitar on three tracks from Coleman's Virgin Beauty (1988): "Three Wishes," "Singing In The Shower," and "Desert Players." Coleman joined the Grateful Dead on stage twice in 1993 playing the band's "The Other One," "Wharf Rat," "Stella Blue," and covering Bobby Bland's "Turn On Your Lovelight," among others.^[10] Another unexpected association was with guitarist Pat Metheny, with whom Coleman recorded Song X (1985); though released under Metheny's name, Coleman was essentially co-leader (contributing all the compositions).

In 1990, the city of Reggio Emilia in Italy held a three-day "Portrait of the Artist" featuring a Coleman quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins. The festival also presented performances of his chamber music and the symphonic Skies of America.

In 1991, Coleman played on the soundtrack for David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch; the orchestra was conducted by Howard Shore. It is notable among other things for including a rare sighting of Coleman playing a jazz standard: Thelonious Monk's blues line “Misterioso.” Two 1972 (pre-electric) Coleman recordings, "Happy House" and "Foreigner in a Free Land" were used in Gus Van Sant's 2000 Finding Forrester.

The mid-1990s saw a flurry of activity from Coleman: he released four records in 1995 and 1996, and for the first time in many years worked regularly with piano players (either Geri Allen or Joachim Kühn).

Coleman has rarely performed on other musicians' records. Exceptions include extensive performances on albums by Jackie McLean in 1967 (New and Old Gospel, on which he played trumpet), and James Blood Ulmer in 1978, and cameo appearances on Yoko Ono's Plastic Ono Band album (1970), Jamaaladeen Tacuma's Renaissance Man (1983), Joe Henry's Scar (2001) and Lou Reed's The Raven (2003).

In September 2006 he released a live album titled Sound Grammar with his newest quartet (Denardo drumming and two bassists, Gregory Cohen and Tony Falanga). This is his first album of new material in ten years, and was recorded in Germany in 2005. It won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for music.

Jazz pianist Joanne Brackeen (who had only briefly studied music as a child) stated in an interview with Marian McPartland that Coleman has been mentoring her and giving her semi-formal music lessons in recent years.^[11]

Legacy[link]

Coleman continues to push himself into unusual playing situations, often with much younger musicians or musicians from radically different musical cultures, and still performs regularly. An increasing number of his compositions, while not ubiquitous, have become minor jazz standards, including "Lonely Woman," "Peace," "Turnaround," "When Will the Blues Leave?" "The Blessing," "Law Years," "What Reason Could I Give" and "I've Waited All My Life", among others. He has influenced virtually every saxophonist of a modern disposition, and nearly every such jazz musician, of the generation that followed him. His songs have proven endlessly malleable: pianists such as Paul Bley and Paul Plimley have managed to turn them to their purposes; John Zorn recorded Spy vs Spy (1989), an album of extremely loud, fast, and abrupt versions of Coleman songs. Finnish jazz singer Carola covered Coleman's "Lonely Woman" and there have even been progressive bluegrass versions of Coleman tunes (by Richard Greene). Coleman's playing has profoundly influenced, directly or otherwise, countless musicians, trying as he has for five decades to understand and discover the shape of not just jazz, but all music to come.

In 2004 Coleman was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to “a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind’s enjoyment and understanding of life.”^[12]

On February 11, 2007, Ornette Coleman was honored with a Grammy award for lifetime achievement, in recognition of this legacy.

On July 9, 2009, Ornette Coleman received the Miles Davis Award, a recognition given by the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal to jazz musicians who have contributed along their careers to the evolution of the jazz music.^[13][14]

On May 1, 2010, Ornette was awarded a honorary doctorate in Music from the University of Michigan for his musical contributions.^[15]

Discography[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Litweiler, John (1992). Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life. London: Quartet Books. ISBN 0-7043-2516-0 
• Coleman, Ornette. Interview with Andy Hamilton. A Question of Scale The Wire July 2005.
• Interview with Eldridge, Roy. Esquire March 1961.
• Jost, Ekkehard (1975). Free Jazz (Studies in Jazz Research 4). Universal Edition. 
• Spellman, A. B. (1985 originally 1966). Four Lives in the Bebop Business. Limelight. ISBN 0-87910-042-7. 
• Mandel, Howard (2007). Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-96714-7. 
• Christian Broecking (2004). Respekt!. Verbrecher. ISBN 3-935843-38-0. 

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2012)

Find more about Ornette Coleman on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote

• Official web site
• Concert Photos, Caravan of Dreams, 1985
• Ornette Coleman at Allmusic
• Ornette Coleman discography at MusicBrainz
• Ornette Coleman at the Internet Movie Database
• Article on Coleman's early music
• Interview (1997)
• Interview (1996)
• Interview (1995)
• Interview (1985)
• Ornette: Made in America 1985 documentary about Ornette Coleman directed by Shirley Clarke, re-released on DVD in 2007.
• Tone Dialing: A Conversation on Friendship with Ornette Coleman
• Ornette Coleman tribute by Jazz at Lincoln Center
• Jazz Conversations with Eric Jackson: Ornette Coleman (Part 1) from WGBH Radio Boston
• Jazz Conversations with Eric Jackson: Ornette Coleman (Part 2) from WGBH Radio Boston

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2009)

Brenda Lee
Background information
Birth name	Brenda Mae Tarpley
Born	(1944-12-11) December 11, 1944 (age 67)
Origin	Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Genres	Pop, rockabilly, country
Occupations	Singer
Years active	1955–present
Labels	Decca (1959–1969) MCA Records (1970–1991) Warner Bros. Records (1991–1993) Telstar Records (1994–1996) Bear Family Records (1997–1998) MCA Nashville (1999–present)
Associated acts	Connie Francis, Skeeter Davis, Ricky Nelson, Lesley Gore, Red Foley, Muruga Booker
Website	Brenda Lee.com

Brenda Mae Tarpley (born December 11, 1944), known as Brenda Lee, is an American performer who sang rockabilly, pop and country music, and had 37 US chart hits during the 1960s, a number surpassed only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ray Charles and Connie Francis.^[1] She is best known for her 1960 hit "I'm Sorry", and 1958's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree", a US holiday standard for more than 50 years.

At 4 ft 9 inches tall, she received the nickname Little Miss Dynamite in 1957 after recording the song "Dynamite"; and was one of the earliest pop stars to have a major contemporary international following.

Lee's popularity faded in the late 1960s as her voice matured, but she continued a successful recording career by returning to her roots as a country singer with a string of hits through the 1970s and 1980s. She is a member of the Rock and Roll, Country Music, Rockabilly and Hit Parade Halls of Fame. Lee currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley in the charity ward of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces at birth. She attended grade schools wherever her father found work, primarily in the corridor between Atlanta and Augusta. Her family was poor, living hand-to-mouth; she shared a bed with her two siblings in a series of three-room houses without running water. Life centered on her parents finding work, their extended family, and the Baptist Church, where she sang solos every Sunday.^[2]

Lee's father, Ruben Tarpley, was the son of a farmer in Georgia's red-clay belt. Although he stood only 5 ft 7 inches, he was an excellent left-handed pitcher and spent 11 years in the U.S. Army playing baseball. Her mother, Annie Grayce Yarbrough, had a similar background of an uneducated working class family in Greene County, Georgia.

Lee was a musical prodigy. Although 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. By the time she was two, she could whistle the melody of songs she heard on the radio.^[3] 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.

Child performer[link]

Lee's voice, pretty face and stage presence won her wider attention from the time she was five years old. At age six, she won a local singing contest sponsored by local elementary schools. The reward was a live appearance on an Atlanta radio show, Starmakers Revue, where she performed for the next year.

Her father died in 1953, and by the time she turned ten, she was the primary breadwinner of her family through singing at events and on local radio and television shows. During that time, she appeared regularly on the country music show "TV Ranch" on WAGA-TV in Atlanta; 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 was remarried to Buell "Jay" Rainwater, who moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked at the Jimmy Skinner Music Center. Lee performed with Skinner at the record shop on two Saturday programs broadcast over Newport, Kentucky radio station WNOP. The family soon returned to Georgia, however, this time to Augusta, and Lee appeared on the show The Peach Blossom Special on WJAT-AM in Swainsboro.

National exposure and stardom[link]

Her break into big-time show business came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 to appear on a Swainsboro radio station to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. An Augusta DJ persuaded Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley was as transfixed as everyone else who heard the huge voice coming from the tiny girl and immediately agreed to let her perform "Jambalaya" on stage that night, unrehearsed. Foley later recounted the moments following her introduction:

The audience erupted in applause and refused to let her leave the stage until she had sung three more songs. 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,^[4] she 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 "Jambayala" backed with "Bigelow 6–200". Lee's second single would feature 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)."

Neither of the 1956 releases charted, but her first issue in '57, "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 ft 9 inch frame, led to her lifelong nickname, Little Miss Dynamite.

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, and "Johnny One Time".

Biggest hits: 1958–1965[link]

Lee achieved her biggest success on the pop charts in the late 1950s through the mid-1960s with rockabilly and rock and roll-styled songs. Her biggest hits included "Jambalaya", "Sweet Nothin's" (No. 4, written by country musician Ronnie Self), "I Want to Be Wanted" (No. 1), "All Alone Am I" (No. 3) and "Fool #1" (No. 3). She had more hits with the more pop-based songs "That's All You Gotta Do" (No. 6), "Emotions" (No. 7), "You Can Depend on Me" (No. 6), "Dum Dum" (No. 4), 1962's "Break It to Me Gently" (No. 2), "Everybody Loves Me But You" (No. 6), and "As Usual" (No. 12). Lee's total of nine consecutive top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits from "That's All You Gotta Do" in 1960 through "All Alone Am I" in 1962 set a record for a female solo artist that was not equalled (and later broken) until 1986 (by Madonna).

The biggest-selling track of Lee's career was a Christmas song. In 1958, when she 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. 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. However, it eventually sold more than five million copies.

In 1960, she recorded her signature song, "I'm Sorry", which hit No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart. It was her first gold single and was nominated for a Grammy. 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" got 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.

Her last top ten single on the pop charts was 1963's "Losing You" (No. 6), while she continued to have other chart songs such as her 1966 song "Coming On Strong" and "Is It True?" in 1964. The latter, featuring Big Jim Sullivan, Jimmy Page on guitars, Bobby Graham on drums, was her only hit single recorded in London, England, and was produced by Mickie Most. It was recorded at Decca Records' number two studio at their West Hampstead complex, as was the B-side, a version of Ray Charles' 1959 classic cut, "What'd I Say?", which wasn't released in America.

International fame[link]

Lee was popular in the United Kingdom early in her career. She toured the UK in 1959, before she had achieved much pop recognition in the US. Her 1961 rockabilly release "Let's Jump the Broomstick", recorded in 1959, did not chart in the US, but went to No. 12 in the UK. She then had two top 10 hits in the UK that were not released as singles in her native country: "Speak To Me Pretty" peaked at No. 3 in early 1962, followed by "Here Comes That Feeling", which reached No. 5. The latter was issed as the b-side to "Everybody Loves Me But You", a No. 6 in the US. However, "Here Comes That Feeling" still made an appearance in the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 69. Brenda Lee also toured in Ireland and appeared on the front of the dancing and entertainment magazine of the time there, Spotlight, in April 1963. She was one of many stars to come to Ireland that year.

Lee enjoys one distinction unique among successful American singers; her opening act on a UK tour in the early 1960s was a then-little-known beat group from Liverpool, England: The Beatles.^[5][6]

Later career[link]

During the early 1970s, Lee re-established herself as a country music artist, and earned a string of top ten hits on the country charts. The first 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).

After a few years of lesser hits, Lee began another run at the top ten with 1979's "Tell Me What It's Like". Two follow-ups also reached the Top 10 in 1980: "The Cowboy and the Dandy" and "Broken Trust" (the latter featuring vocal backing by The Oak Ridge Boys). A 1982 album, The Winning Hand, featuring Lee along with Dolly Parton, Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, was a surprise hit, reaching the top ten on the U.S. country albums chart. Her last well-known hit was 1985's "Hallelujah, I Love Her So", a duet with George Jones.

Recent years[link]

Over the ensuing years, Lee continued to record and perform around the world, previously cutting records in four different languages. In 1992, she recorded a duet ("You’ll Never Know") with Willy DeVille on his album Loup Garou. Today, she continues to perform and tour.

On October 4, 2000, Lee inducted fellow country music legend Charley Pride into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Her autobiography, Brenda Lee: Little Miss Dynamite, was published by Hyperion in 2002 (ISBN 0-7868-6644-6).

Family[link]

Although Lee's songs have often centered on lost loves, and although she did lose her father at a young age, her marriage to Ronnie Shacklett in 1963 has endured. He was able to deal with the notoriously rapacious music industry and is credited with ensuring her long-term financial success. They have two daughters, Jolie and Julie (who was named after Patsy Cline's daughter) and three grandchildren, Taylor, Jordan and Charley.

Recognition[link]

Lee reached the final ballot for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 and 2001 without being inducted, but was voted into the hall for 2002. To date, the 11 years between her 1990 and 2001 ballot appearances is the largest gap of this nature in the history of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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. In 1997, she was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; and is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

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.

References in popular culture[link]

Chuck Berry wrote a song about Lee on the album St. Louis to Liverpool. She was also immortalized in Golden Earring's 1973 hit "Radar Love": "Radio's playing some forgotten song / Brenda Lee's 'Coming on Strong'." She was also remembered as a heroine to Burton Cummings on his 1978 album "Dream of a Child" in the song "Dream of a Child," including the lines "When I was a child, dreamed that Elvis Presley, was standing on the corner, kissing Brenda Lee", and in the closing line, "I love Brenda Lee / Brenda Lee loves me / yeah...". Ben Vaughn wrote and released "I'm Sorry (But So Is Brenda Lee)" in 1985, which has also been covered by Marshall Crenshaw. Lee is also referenced in Smokey and the Bandit.

"Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" was heard in the 1990 movie Home Alone. "I'm Sorry" can be heard in the 1991 movie The Fisher King, the 1993 movie This Boy's Life, and the 1995 movie Tommy Boy. "Sweet Nothing's" can be heard in 2009's critically acclaimed An Education.

"I Wonder," released in 1963, was the song playing at Colleen's funeral in the episode "The Cost of Living" in Season 3 of the ABC television show Lost. The episode originally aired on November 1, 2006. Kelly Clarkson appeared as Lee on two episodes of the NBC series American Dreams. "Break It To Me Gently" plays during the credits of "The Gold Violin", Season 2: Episode 7 of the AMC series Mad Men and Season 1: Episode 7 of the ABC series "Pan Am (TV series)".

Her 1963 cover of "Fly Me to the Moon" is used in the end credits of the 2010 video game, Bayonetta.

Discography[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Argyrakis, Andy (2007-07-05). "Reluctant Legend". Christianity Today. http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2007/brendalee-0507.html. Retrieved 2008-04-02. 
• Wooding, Dan. "'Little Miss Dynamite' returns to her Gospel roots with a little help from some of her best friends". ASSIST News Service. http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/2007/s07050170.htm. Retrieved 2012-02-03. 
• "Brenda Lee: the Lady, the Legend". Brenda Lee Productions. http://www.brendalee.com/pages/biography.html. Retrieved 2009-04-10. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Brenda Lee

	Book: Brenda Lee
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• Brenda Lee's official website

v t e Brenda Lee Albums Grandma, What Great Songs You Sang! Brenda Lee This Is...Brenda Emotions All the Way Sincerely, Brenda Lee All Alone Am I ..."Let Me Sing" Brenda, That's All Gospel Duets with Treasured Friends Other albums The Winning Hand Singles "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)" "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" "I'm Sorry" "I Want to Be Wanted" "You Can Depend on Me" "Break It to Me Gently" "All Alone Am I" "Jingle Bell Rock" "Let It Be Me" "Always on My Mind" "He's My Rock" Other singles "America the Beautiful" Songs "Fly Me to the Moon" "The Letter" "Our Day Will Come" Related topics Discography Connie Francis Skeeter Davis Ricky Nelson Lesley Gore Red Foley Muruga Booker Book:Brenda Lee