Jean Shepard
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Jean Shepard (November 21, 1933 –) was one of the first female vocalists in the country music field to become a major star in the early 1950's. She was born November 21, 1933 in Paul's Valley, Oklahoma.
Shepard began her career as a teenager singing with the female country band The Melody Ranch Girls. In 1952 she began touring as part of Hank Thompson's road show and that year signed a contract with Capitol Records which would extend into 1973.
Shepard had her first hit in 1953 with A Dear John Letter, a duet with Ferlin Husky which sold over a million copies and became one of the biggest country hits on the decade. She quickly began racking up solo hits including "A Satisfied Mind" and "I Thought of You" and immediately established herself as Kitty Wells top rival for the Queen of Country Music throne.
Shepard has been a Grand Ole Opry member since 1955 and has by far the longest association with the Opry of any female singer. She was married to fellow Opry star Hawkshaw Hawkins and left a widow when he died in the 1963 plane crash that also claimed the lives of Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas.
Shepard went through a patch of hitless years from 1959 to 1963 in part due to the emergence of a number of new country female singers including Cline, Skeeter Davis, and Loretta Lynn but she snagged a major comeback in 1964 with the Top 5 hit “Second Fiddle (to an Old Guitar)” and continued to score top 20 successes for the rest of the decade. In 1973 she signed with United Artists Records and soon had the biggest solo hit of her career with "Slippin' Away" later that year.
Shepard's association with United Artists ended in 1978 and since that time she has occasionally recorded albums for smaller labels. She has always remained a popular country music concert performer and one of the cornerstones of the Grand Ole Opry, still singing in fine voice in her seventies.
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