![]() ![]() Around that time, we were moving, and we had a big ol' overstuffed chair out in the yard they hadn't moved yet. "I remember when I was five saying I was going to sing on the Grand Ole Opry,"she said, "but I was so bashful, I couldn't bear for people to hear me sing. My favorites were the Louvin Brothers."Connie discovered that she was distantly related on her mother's side to a vintage bluegrass act, the Lilly Brothers, but that realization didn't come until years later. We'd listen to the Opry when we could pick it up. My stepfather played mandolin, and he had a brother who played fiddle, and another brother who played guitar. The first song I remember learning was 'You Are My Sunshine.' My dad played 'Til The End Of The World' over and over. "My real daddy's favorite singer was Ernest Tubb,"she says, "and my mom's was Eddy Arnold. If someone came to the house, I'd bring them a glass of water and a chair to make sure I'd get noticed."Ĭountry music was the soundtrack to Connie Smith's life. They needed to watch the little ones, see they didn't get hurt, watch the big ones, see they didn't get into trouble. ![]() There were six younger than me, and the rest were older. He and my mom had two kids, one stillborn, so at one point there was fourteen kids in the house. "There were five of us,"Connie remembered, "and my stepfather had eight children. Wilma eventually married a man named Tom Clark, and Connie only saw her father twice after that. Hobart Meador was an alcoholic, abusive to the family, and Wilma divorced him when Connie was seven. Her parents, Hobart and Wilma Meador, were from West Virginia, and returned there when Connie was five months old, moving on to Dungannon, Ohio. Constance June Meador was born on Augin Elkhart, Indiana, near Chicago. The rags to riches story, played up in the liner notes to Connie's first album, is no less true for being oft-repeated. Her voice was so musical and so free of artifice that there was almost universal assent that the next great one had arrived. Connie's first record, released when she was just twenty-two, was remarkably mature and fully realized. Her death left a void, one that Connie Smith seemed to fill overnight. ![]() After a ten-year struggle, Patsy had become the best pure singer in country music. It's family portraits that line her living room, not onstage shots or award plaques.Ĭomparisons don't mean much, but it sometimes seems more than coincidental that Connie began recording within a year or so of Patsy Cline's death. Her life revolves around music, but more so around her children and grandchildren. She is a natural born singer, but not a natural born entertainer. The first prerequisite of stardom is that you must never tire of talking about yourself, but it doesn't come easily to Connie Smith. The gregariousness and easy laugh just barely mask the innate shyness. but the star's mantle sits uneasily upon her. by common consensus one of the great voices of country music. "There's only three real female singers: Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, and Connie Smith. ![]()
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