Lee met Ronnie Shacklett during a Bo Diddley and Jackie Wilson concert at Nashville's Fairgrounds Coliseum in November 1962, and they married on April 24, 1963, less than six months later. Lee and Shacklett have three grandsons, Taylor, Jordan, Charley, and two daughters, Jolie and Julie (named after Patsy Cline's daughter).
In 1999, Brenda got severely sick. She was diagnosed with cysts on her vocal cords.
Brenda Lee's first great success was in 1955 when she met the Country & Western star Red Foley at a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV show "Ozark Jubilee". An Augusta disk jockey convinced Foley to hear Brenda singing before the start of the show. He was very impressed by her performance and decided to let Brenda perform on the show. The audience loved her singing, and they didn't allow her to leave the stage until she sang three more songs. Brenda became a regular of the Ozark Jubilee in Springfield. She signed a five-year contract for the show, but it was broken in 1957 by a lawsuit brought by her mother and her manager.
In 1956, Brenda signed a contract with Decca Records. A year later, she moved to Nashville with her family. She started recording songs that frequently entered the top charts. Some of the biggest hits of Brenda's career are "Jambalaya", "One Step at a Time", and "Dynamite", which earned her the nickname of "Little Miss Dynamite".
Brenda worked with the manager, Dub Allbritten and the legendary producer, Owen Bradley. In 1959, her song "Sweet Nothin's" took fourth place in the Rock and Roll charts. "I Want to Be Wanted" hit the number 1, while "All Alone Am I" and "Fool #1" both hit number 3. She had many other top charting hits like "That's All You Gotta Do" (No. 6), "Emotions" (No. 7), "You Can Depend on Me" (No. 6), "Dum Dum" (No. 4), and "Everybody Loves Me But You" (No. 6).
The best selling track of Brenda's career was a Christmas song called "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree". The song initially sold only 5,000 copies, but it later sold more than five million copies. In 1960, she recorded the song "I'm Sorry", which reached number 1 on the Billboard pop chart. This song was her first gold single and earned her a Grammy Award nomination.
Return to the previous page| Birth Date: | 11 Dec, 1944 |
| Age: | 75 yrs |
| Occupations: | Singer Songwriter |
| Citizenship: | United States of America |
| Birth Place: | Atlanta |
| Gender: | Female |
| Description: | American singer and recording artist |
| Net Worth 2020: | 20 million |
| Net Worth 2021: | 20 million |
