Brenda Lee

Brenda Mae Tarpley, who goes by Brenda Lee, was born on December 11, 1944, and is an American singer. Her ability to work across pop, country, rock and roll, and gospel brought her commercial success, and she became one of the top-selling artists of the 1960s, with music that attracted listeners of all ages. Her holiday track "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," first recorded in 1958, reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 2023. At that point, Lee became the oldest artist ever to hit the top spot, setting several chart records along the way.

Her wide-ranging career earned her spots in both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Lee was seen as a child prodigy because she could sing from a very young age. She first gained attention through appearances on 1950s television shows, which led to a recording deal with Decca Records (later MCA) when she was just 11. Her earliest records were rock and roll, and she had her first commercial breakthrough in 1959 with the top-five single "Sweet Nothin's." Her music moved toward pop after she topped the U.S. chart in 1960 with "I'm Sorry." That same year, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" was re-released and became a commercial hit for the first time.

This new pop style appealed to both teens and adults. Through 1963, Lee released a string of top-10 hits in several countries, including "Fool No. 1," "Break It to Me Gently," "All Alone Am I," and "Losing You." In the mid-1960s, she began recording in foreign languages, starting with Japanese, which produced the top-10 single "One Rainy Night in Tokyo." Lee then tried out different musical styles, including an album of New Orleans music called For the First Time (1968) and a soul-inspired project, Memphis Portrait (1970). After facing several personal difficulties, she reinvented herself as a country artist in adulthood. This shift began with the 1973 top-10 country song "Nobody Wins." During the 1970s, she had six top-10 country singles in the U.S. and Canada, such as "Sunday Sunrise," "Big Four Poster Bed," and "Rock on Baby." A pop album that failed in the mid-1970s pushed her back to country in 1979.

1988–2009: Musical changes and career slow-down

That year, she scored another top-10 country hit with "Tell Me What It's Like." She had two more top-10 country songs through 1981 and continued recording country-flavored albums until she left MCA in 1986. Warner Bros. signed Lee to a new contract and put out a self-titled album in 1991, but it didn't sell well. Later that same year, she released a Christmas collection. Around this time, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" got another boost when it appeared in the film Home Alone.

Since then, the song has been played on the radio every holiday season. Lee recorded and performed less often during the 1990s and 2000s. Among her new work was a gospel collection called Gospel Duets with Treasured Friends (2007). In 2023, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" reached number one on the U.S. chart, and Lee put out a music video to promote the song.

Early life

Brenda Mae Tarpley was born on December 11, 1944, at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She was the second of four children of Annie Grayce Yarbrough and Ruben Lindsey Tarpley. Her father served 11 years in the U.S. Army and later held various labor jobs, including carpentry, factory work, and construction. Her mother also worked in cotton mills.

Tarpley was born a month premature, weighing four pounds, 11 ounces. Her mother named her Brenda, and her father nicknamed her "Bootie Mae." The family rented three-room homes around the Metro Atlanta area as Ruben found carpentry work and lived on about $20 a week. After Ruben broke his arm in 1951, he was temporarily out of work, and the family lived on a tenant farm in Conyers, Georgia. Tarpley started at Conyers Elementary School in 1951.

When Ruben recovered, they moved to a clapboard house in Lithonia, Georgia, where Tarpley shared a bed with her siblings. Most of her childhood toys were made by her father, and her grandmother sewed many of her dresses. Tarpley began singing along to the radio when she was about eight months old. She won her first talent contest at age five, singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." She later entered a contest at Conyers Elementary School, performing "Too Young" and "Slow Poke," but lost to an 18-month-old.

She kept entering talent shows, singing songs by Hank Williams and Peggy Lee. In 1952, she performed at the Sports Arena in Atlanta with the Wranglers and made her local TV debut that same year on Atlanta's TV Ranch, singing Williams's "Hey, Good Lookin'." In 1953, Tarpley's father was working construction when a hammer fell from a scaffold and hit him on the head. He was knocked unconscious and taken to a hospital, where doctors performed brain surgery. He died soon after, leaving the family "penniless." Tarpley then had to help support the family through her singing gigs.

Without a car, they took the bus from Lithonia to Atlanta every week so she could perform. A local TV producer suggested she use a stage name because "Brenda Tarpley" was hard to remember, and she soon became Brenda Lee. Her mother remarried, and the family briefly moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and Augusta, Georgia. In Augusta, she attended North Augusta Elementary School and junior high.

1955–1958: National TV exposure and early rock recordings

Her stepfather became her manager in 1955 and booked shows around the Atlanta area. Lee's big break came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 to appear on a Georgia radio station in order to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. A local disc jockey convinced Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley agreed and let her perform.