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Brenda Lee Biography | Country Music | Ken Burns

In 1956, Brenda signed with Decca and came to Nashville, where Owen Bradley became her producer. Her first single was Williams’s “Jambalaya,” followed in 1957 by the explosive pop hit, “Dynamite,” earning her a massive international audience and the nickname “Little Miss Dynamite.” A string of Top 10 pop hits throughout the mid-1960s followed, including her signature song, “I’m Sorry” (1960) and the holiday classic “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” (1958).

In the 1970s, Lee returned to the music she’d loved in childhood and scored half-a-dozen country Top 10s – songs like “Big Four Poster Bed” and the Kris Kristofferson-penned “Nobody Wins.” By the late 1980s, she’d had 32 country hits and had sold over 90 million records worldwide, more than any other woman singer in history. She was nominated for a GRAMMY with 1979’s “Tell Me What It’s Like” and again in 1980 for “Broken Trust.” Duets with George Jones and Willie Nelson and a collaboration with k.d.lang, Kitty Wells, and Loretta Lynn led to more sales, so that today her Nashville commercial success (as measured by cumulative record sales of disks produced in Music City) is second only to Elvis. Brenda was inducted into the Country and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame in 1997 and 2002, respectively.

Born: December 11, 1944, Atlanta, Georgia

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