Poor girls who sang their way upward
The rise from rags to riches for women and men is an oft-told tale in the entertainment business.
3.
Stage name: Crystal Gayle
Birth name: Brenda Gail Webb
(Loretta Lynn's sister)
Born Jan. 9, 1951
in Paintsville, Ky.
"Crystal" was the first of eight Webb children born in a hospital. Her father Ted was a coal miner who developed black lung disease. When Crystal was four years old the family, seeking better medical care for her father, moved to a retired miner's community in Wabash, Ind. Clara Webb worked as a nurse's aide in the town of about 10,000 people. Ted Webb died in 1959.
As a teenager, Crystal sang in her sister Loretta Lynn's group when they toured. Later Loretta's husband managed her early career in Nashville. Success finally came when she broke with Loretta's "hillbilly" approach and began singing crossover material, which was quite in line with the Nashville Sound.
[In those days, Southerners often considered "hillbilly" to be a slur, though that is less the case now.]
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