Jean Shepard

Few country singers -- let alone female country singers -- of the 20th century produced a large body of work as enduring as Jean Shepard's. Her voice was pure country -- accent on both words. She had her first Top Ten hit in 1953, and her last almost exactly 20 years later. In between, she cut one great record after another, mostly on Capitol Records. Nearly all of them crackle, no matter the topic, with honky tonk angel spirit. Born in Oklahoma, one of ten children in a sharecropper's family, Shepard grew up in Visalia, California, about 100 miles north of Bakersfield. As a ...