Sat 20 Feb 2021
Music I’m Listening To: BRENDA LEE “I’m Sorry.”
Posted by Steve under Music I'm Listening To[12] Comments
Brenda Lee was only 15 when this song was recorded and released, in 1960. It reached Number One on the Billboard singles chart in July of that year:
February 20th, 2021 at 12:59 am
Brenda Lee, Connie Francis, Dusty Springfield, Etta James, Kitty Wells, Kay Star, Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee, Bobbie Gentry, Jeanne C. Riley …not only survived in the rock’n’roll era but thrived in it. The 50s were a field-day for talented female vocalists. They’d put anyone singing today in the doghouse.
February 20th, 2021 at 9:16 am
You ought to change that to “50s and 60s,” I think, but you have no quarrel from me.
February 20th, 2021 at 9:03 am
Her nickname then was Little Miss Dynamite, being only 4’9″ tall. About 10 years ago we saw her open for Neil Sedaka in a free concert in Brooklyn, and she still sounded great.
February 20th, 2021 at 9:17 am
From her Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Lee
She is a member of the Rock and Roll, Country Music and Rockabilly Halls of Fame. She is also a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award recipient. Lee is the only woman to be inducted into both the Rock and Roll and Country Music Halls of Fame.
In April 2017, she was still performing and touring.
February 20th, 2021 at 9:58 am
My remark was too broad. Of course there’s good vocalists today; but they’re typically not at the top of the music industry. The biggest names today, seem able to do anything but write their own songs, sing their own songs, play their own instruments. And I mean, without any help from technology. Could any big star today play Folsom Prison like Cash? Could anyone cut an album like Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ where its just him and his guitar? How about when Ronstadt switched from pop to swing, and then from swing to Mexican folk? The great vocalists could perform in small road clubs or in Central Park. No laser-lights, dance teams, beat machines, lip-syncing, or ‘Autotune’ software.
February 20th, 2021 at 10:57 am
What I always liked about Brenda Lee was her sense of humor – always self-directed and self-deprecating.
Once on Merv Griffin’s show, when she’d done her song and joined the other guests at the couch (it was that long ago), Brenda noted that she ought to start a business designing belt buckles – “… ’cause that’s all I ever get to see!”
(The other guests that night were all quite tall – and this was when 6’4″ Arthur Treacher was Merv’s sidekick.)
Brenda Lee still performs when she can – and she points out that no matter what time of year it is, she always has to sing “Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree” … which she does, gladly.
Great lady.
February 20th, 2021 at 11:11 am
February 20th, 2021 at 2:00 pm
I first noticed Brenda Lee when as a quite young kid–maybe preteen–she appeared several times on Red Foley’s Ozark Jubilee television program. She could belt the songs out at such a young age!
February 20th, 2021 at 2:24 pm
I wonder if any of those old OZARK JAMBOREE shows still exist?
February 20th, 2021 at 5:18 pm
By the way, Richard, you were right about Brenda Lee being a pre-teen when she was on Red Foley’s show. Quoting again from Wikipedia:
“On March 31, 1955, the 10-year-old made her network debut on Ozark Jubilee in Springfield, Missouri. Although her five-year contract with the show was broken by a 1957 lawsuit brought by her mother and her manager, she made regular appearances on the program throughout its run.”
February 20th, 2021 at 6:24 pm
Foley was Pat Boone’s father-in-law.
February 20th, 2021 at 6:57 pm
And I’ve answered my own question. Here’s a video of a complete OZARK JUBILEE show from 1957, when Brenda was 12 or 13. She appears around the 5:40 mark and again at the end, about 26:40, singing a closing duet with Rex Allen acting as a substitute host for Red Foley: