Dottie West (October 11, 1932 – September 4, 1991) was an
American country music singer and songwriter.
Along with her friends and
co-recording artists
Patsy Cline and
Loretta Lynn,
she is considered one of the genre's most influential and
groundbreaking female artists.
Dottie West's career started in the early
1960s, with her Top 10 hit, "
Here Comes My Baby Back Again," which won her the first
Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance
in 1965.
In the 1960s, West was one of the few female country singers
working in what was then a male-dominated industry, influencing other
female country singers like
Lynn Anderson,
Crystal Gayle,
Barbara Mandrell,
Dolly Parton, and
Tammy Wynette.
Throughout the 1960s, West had country hits within the Top 10 and 20.
In the early 1970s, West wrote a popular commercial for the
Coca-Cola company, titled "
Country Sunshine", which she nearly brought to the top of the charts in 1973.
In the late-70s, she teamed up with
country-pop superstar,
Kenny Rogers
for a series of duets, which brought her career in directions it had
never gone before, earning Platinum selling albums and No. 1 records for
the very first time.
Her duet recordings with Rogers, like "
Every Time Two Fools Collide," "
All I Ever Need Is You," and "
What Are We Doin' In Love,"
eventually became country-music standards.
In the mid-1970s, her image
and music underwent a major metamorphosis, bringing her to the very peak
of her popularity as a solo act, and reaching No. 1 for the very first
time on her own in 1980 with "
A Lesson in Leavin'".
[citation needed]
| Dottie West |
|---|
Dottie West promotional photo from 1977.
|
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Dorothy Marie Marsh |
| Born |
October 11, 1932 |
| Origin |
McMinnville, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Died |
September 4, 1991 (aged 58) |
| Genres |
Country
Country pop |
| Occupations |
Singer-songwriter, actress |
| Instruments |
Vocals, guitar |
| Years active |
1959–1991 |
| Labels |
Starday, RCA Victor, United Artists/Liberty, Permian |
| Associated acts |
Jim Reeves, Don Gibson, Jimmy Dean, Kenny Rogers, Larry Gatlin, Steve Wariner, Shelly West |
Early life
Childhood and teen years
Born
Dorothy Marie Marsh outside
McMinnville, Tennessee, she was the oldest of 10 children of Hollis and Pelina Marsh.
[1]
The family soon moved to a bigger, better house, but like many rural
families at the time, the family was still so poor they lacked
electricity and indoor plumbing and had to make their own soap out of
hog grease and
lye.
To make ends meet, Pelina eventually opened up her own restaurant soon after, where Dottie often helped her.
Her childhood was marred by a
dysfunctional relationship with her father, an
alcoholic who
abused her both
physically and
sexually.
The abuse continued until she was 17, when she finally reported him to
the local sheriff.
She testified against her father in court, and he was
sentenced to 40 years in prison.
After a brief stint living with the sheriff, she moved to McMinnville
with her mother and siblings.
She also joined her high school band,
"The Cookskins," where she sang and played guitar.
With the help of her
mother's business and a local entrepreneur, she attained a music
scholarship to attend college at
Tennessee Technological University in
Cookeville, Tennessee in 1951.
There she met her first husband, a steel guitarist named Bill West, with whom she had four children.
[citation needed]
Career discovery
After graduation, Dottie West moved with her family to
Cleveland, Ohio, where she began appearing on the television program
Landmark Jamboree as one half of a
country pop
vocal duo called the "Kay-Dots" alongside partner Kathy Dee.
At the
same time, West made numerous trips to Nashville in the hopes of landing
a recording deal. In 1959, she and Bill auditioned for producer Don
Pierce at
Starday,
and were immediately offered a contract.
The resulting singles West cut
for the label proved unsuccessful, but she nonetheless moved to
Nashville two years later.
There, she and her husband fell in with a group of aspiring songwriters, including
Willie Nelson,
Roger Miller,
Hank Cochran, and
Harlan Howard.
West often played hostess to these struggling songwriters, offering
them a place to stay and eat. In return, they taught West about the
structure of songwriting.
During this time, she also became a close
friend of groundbreaking female country singer
Patsy Cline and her husband Charlie Dick.
[2]
West and Cline met backstage at the
Grand Ole Opry
and became friends; Cline would become one of West's biggest career
inspirations.
As West related to Ellis Nassour in the 1980 book
Patsy Cline,
the greatest advice Cline ever gave her was, "When you're onstage sing
to the audience with all of your heart and mean it.
Then cast a spell
over them. If you can't do it with feeling, then don't." In those early
days in Nashville, West and her family would often not have enough to
pay the rent or buy the week's groceries, so Cline would hire her to
help with her wardrobe and West's husband Bill to play in her band.
Cline even offered to help pay West's rent or buy groceries when she and
Bill were struggling to stay in Nashville.
When Cline got into a car accident in June 1961, West was one of the
first people to arrive on the scene, picking out a piece of glass from
Cline's hair.
Shortly before her death, Cline gave West her scrapbook,
filled with clippings and photos from over the course of her career.
(West later gave the scrapbook to Cline's daughter, Julie.)
On March 5,
1963, Cline died in a plane crash along with
Cowboy Copas,
Hawkshaw Hawkins, and her pilot and manager Randy Hughes on her way home from a benefit in
Kansas City,
at Memorial Hall, a benefit West also attended.
West begged Cline to
leave with her and Bill in the car, but Cline, anxious to get back home
to her children, opted to fly instead.
In 1963,
Jim Reeves
recorded a selection of West's authorship and composition, "Is This
Me," which became a No. 3 hit that year. As a result, Reeves helped West
secure a recording contract with
RCA Victor the same year.
Country music career
1963 – 1975: Country success
West earned her first Top 40 hit in 1963 with "Let Me Off at the Corner," followed a year later by the Top Ten duet with
Jim Reeves "Love Is No Excuse".
Also in 1964, she auditioned for producer
Chet Atkins, the architect of the Nashville sound, who agreed to produce her composition "
Here Comes My Baby".
The single made Dottie the first female country artist to win a
Grammy Award (
Best Female Country Vocal Performance), leading to an invitation to join the
Grand Ole Opry.
[3]
"Here Comes My Baby" reached No. 10 on
Billboard Magazine's Country charts in 1964.
After releasing the
Here Comes My Baby LP in 1965, Dottie and producer Chet Atkins reunited the following year for
Suffer Time, which generated her biggest hit yet in "
Would You Hold It Against Me."
In 1967, the West/Atkins pairing issued three separate albums:
With All My Heart and Soul (featuring the No. 8 smash "
Paper Mansions"),
Dottie West Sings Sacred Ballads, and
I'll Help You Forget Her.
During the same period, she also appeared in a pair of films,
Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar and
There's a Still on the Hill.[1]
Dottie continued to have success as a solo artist during the late 1960s
with such songs as "What's Come Over My Baby," and "Country Girl" which
garnered her an offer to write a commercial based on it for
Coca-Cola in 1970.
The soft drink company liked the result so much that it signed her to a lifetime contract as a jingle writer.
[citation needed]
After the 1968 LP
Country Girl, West teamed with
Don Gibson for a record of duets,
Dottie and Don, featuring the number two hit "
Rings of Gold" released in 1969.
The album was her last with Atkins, and she followed it in 1970 with two releases,
Forever Yours and
Country Boy and Country Girl, a collection of pairings with
Jimmy Dean.
Around the time of
Have You Heard Dottie West, released in 1971, she left her husband Bill and, in 1972, married drummer Byron Metcalf, who was 12 years her junior.
[4]
Due possibly in part to her recent stratospheric success with duets,
her solo career suffered between 1969 and 1972. Most of her singles
released at the time had failed even to peak in the Top 40, and her
album sales were declining.
In 1973 West provided Coca-Cola with another ad, featuring a song called "
Country Sunshine."
The popularity of the commercial prompted her to release the song as a
single, and it became one of her biggest hits, reaching No. 2 on the
country charts and No. 49 on the Pop charts.
The ad itself also netted a
Clio Award for commercial of the year and she became the first country artist ever to win that particular honor.
[citation needed]
"Country Sunshine" proved to be a solid comeback as she was nominated for two Grammys for the song,
Best Country Song and Best Female Country Vocal Performance a year later.
After the release of
House of Love in 1974, West notched a number of Top 40 hits including the Top 10 "
Last Time I Saw Him,"
[5] "House of Love," and "Lay Back Lover."
Before signing with
United Artists Records in 1976, her final album for RCA,
Carolina Cousins, was released in 1975.
1976 to 1985: Country-pop
In the late '70s, West's image underwent a huge metamorphosis; the woman who had once performed outfitted in conservative
gingham dresses, and had originally refused to record
Kris Kristofferson's "
Help Me Make It Through the Night" because it was "too sexy," began appearing in
spandex-sequined
Bob Mackie designs.
(She had relented in late 1970 and recorded "Help Me Make It Through The Night" on the album
Careless Hands, which was released in 1971.)
As the
sexual revolution peaked, so did West's career.
[1]
Under United Artists, West material changed from traditional country to up-tempo and slow-tempo
Adult Contemporary-styled music.
In 1977, West released her first album under United Artists,
When It's Just You and Me.
The title track peaked at No. 19 on the country charts.
In 1977, she was recording the song "
Every Time Two Fools Collide" when, according to legend,
Kenny Rogers
suddenly entered the studio and began singing along.
Released as a
duet, the single hit number one, West's first; the duo's 1979 "
All I Ever Need Is You" and 1981 "
What Are We Doin' in Love" topped the charts as well, and a 1979 duets album titled
Classics also proved successful.
[5]
The duo proved popular enough to be booked in some of the biggest
venues in the United States and other countries.
In 1978 and 1979 they
won the
Country Music Association's "Vocal Duo of the Year" award, one of West's few major awards.
During the 1980s, West continued to generate solo hits, most notably "
A Lesson in Leavin'."
Her popularity as a featured performer on the Grand Ole Opry endured as
well.
"A Lesson in Leavin'" was West's first No. 1 solo hit.
It also
peaked at No. 73 on the pop charts.
A week before "A Lesson in Leavin'"
reached the No. 1 spot, it was part of a historic Top 5 in country
music, when all women held the Top 5 spots.
The album that included this
song,
Special Delivery, included two other Top 15 Country hits from 1980, "
You Pick Me Up (And Put Me Down)" and "Leavin's for Unbelievers".
In 1981, West had a pair of back-to-back No. 1 hits, "
Are You Happy Baby"
and "What Are We Doin' in Love" with Kenny Rogers.
"What Are We Doin'
in Love" was West's only Top 40 hit on the pop charts, reaching No. 14,
becoming a major crossover hit in mid-1981. Her 1981 album
Wild West was one of her biggest sellers.
As the 1980s progressed, West's popularity began to slip.
[1] However, she did introduce herself to younger audiences as she lent her voice to
Melissa Raccoon in the film
The Raccoons and the Lost Star in 1983, a precursor to the later series produced by Kevin Gillis,
The Raccoons.[6]
West's 1982 album
High Time spawned her last Top 20 hit, "
It's High Time,"
which reached No. 16.
The album's other single, "You're Not Easy to
Forget," only peaked at No. 26. West's next two albums under Liberty
Records,
Full Circle and
New Horizons,
were both commercial failures. West's last Top 40 hit was 1983's "Tulsa
Ballroom."
In 1984, West departed from her label and switched to the
independent label Permian.
In 1981, West's daughter
Shelly also made a career in country music; she is best known for her hit duet with
David Frizzell, "
You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma," which hit No. 1 that year.
As a solo artist, Shelly notched her own No. 1 in 1983 entitled "
Jose Cuervo."
During the early and mid '80s, Shelly notched several more hits,
including Top 10 solo hits "Flight 309 to Tennessee" and "Another Motel
Memory." After getting married in the late 1980s, Shelly left the music
business.
In 1980, Dottie West filed for divorce against Byron Metcalf,
citing his drinking and infidelity.
In 1982, she was asked to play the lead role in the stage production of
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
That summer, she toured for four weeks in the stage production,
performing across the country. She also had her own float in the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that year.
She also posed for a revealing photo in the men's magazine
Oui.
In 1983, she married her soundman, Al Winters, 22 years her junior.
In 1984, she appeared in the play
Bring it on Home.
In 1986, she made her screen debut in the
science fiction film
The Aurora Encounter.
In 1984, West released her final studio album,
Just Dottie.
This album was not very successful; all three of the singles that it
contained failed to chart in the Top 40.
Her last chart hit, "We Know
Better Now", reached only number 53 in 1985.
[1]
Death and legacy
On August 30, 1991, West was scheduled to perform at the
Grand Ole Opry. Shortly after leaving her apartment at Nashville's Wessex Towers, West's car, a Chrysler New Yorker that
Kenny Rogers
had given her following the loss of her possessions at the IRS auction,
stalled in front of the old Belle Meade theater on Harding Road.
West's
81-year-old neighbor, George Thackston, spotted her on the side of the
road and offered to drive her to the Opry for her scheduled appearance.
Frantic about getting to the Opry on time, she had urged the man to
speed.
He lost control of his vehicle while exiting at the Opryland exit on
Briley Parkway at a speed of 55 miles per hour.
The exit ramp was posted
for 25 miles per hour. The car left the ramp, went airborne and struck
the central division.
West did not believe she was injured as badly as
her neighbor had been and reportedly did not seem harmed to officers who
responded to the scene.
She insisted he be treated first. West, though
she thought she was unharmed, suffered severe internal injuries and
proved to have suffered both a ruptured
spleen and a lacerated
liver.
Her spleen was removed that Friday and, the following Monday, she
underwent two more surgeries to stop her liver from bleeding; these
ultimately failed in that effort.
Doctors said that West knew the extent
of her injuries and even visited with Kenny Rogers shortly before her
last operation.
On September 4, 1991, during her third operation, West
died on the operating table at 9:43 a.m., at the age of 58.
Her funeral was held at Christ Church on Old Hickory Boulevard.
There were 600 friends and family attendees, including
Emmylou Harris,
Connie Smith,
Johnny Cash and
June Carter Cash and
Larry Gatlin.
Her friend and fellow artist,
Steve Wariner, whom she had helped make it to Nashville as a young man, sang "
Amazing Grace".
A couple of weeks later, President
George H.W. Bush, a longtime fan for whom she had performed at the
White House, expressed his condolences at the
CMA Awards.
Her hometown of
McMinnville, Tennessee dedicated Highway 56 to her memory, naming it the Dottie West Memorial Highway.
Family Feud dedicated a week of shows in the fall of 1991 with the stars of the Grand Ole Opry in her memory.
George Thackston pleaded no contest to a charge of reckless
endangerment arising out of the fatal accident.
On March 26, 1992, a
judge sentenced him to 11 months and 29 days of probation, and also
ordered him to complete an alcohol treatment program.
A blood alcohol
test performed after the crash found that Thackston had a blood alcohol
level of .08, which was not enough for him to be deemed intoxicated
under Tennessee law.
[8]
In 1995, actress
Michele Lee, with the help of West's daughter Shelly, produced and starred in the
made-for-TV biopic
Big Dreams and Broken Hearts: The Dottie West Story that premiered on
CBS.
Lee starred with Kenny Rogers, wore all of West's original clothes,
including her famed Bob Mackie outfits, and even sang West's hits for
the movie.
It proved to be one of the most successful TV movies in CBS
history.
[citation needed]
That same year, a biography book called
Country Sunshine: The Dottie West Story was released, written by Judy Berryhill and Francis Meeker.
In 1999, country music singer
Jo Dee Messina covered West's biggest solo hit, "A Lesson in Leavin'" for her album,
I'm Alright.
The song stayed at No. 2 for seven weeks on the
Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart that year, and was one of the year's biggest songs.
In 2000, West was also honored with the BMI Golden Voice Awards with
the "Female Golden Legacy Award."
She was the second woman to win this
type of BMI award, the first being her friend and mentor Patsy Cline.
Today, her hometown of
McMinnville, Tennessee holds a "Dottie West Music Festival" each year in October.
West was ranked No. 23 in
Country Music Television's
40 Greatest Women of Country Music in 2002.
Source:Wikipedia
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