Norma Jean
b. Norma Jean Beasley, 31 January 1938, near Wellston, Oklahoma, USA. Norma Jean showed an early interest in singing and after the family relocated to Oklahoma City, when she was five years old, she was given guitar tuition by an aunt. At the age of 13 she had her own thrice-weekly show on KLPR and in 1958, after working with several other artists including Leon McAuliffe, she became a regular on Red Foley's OZARK JUBILEE television show, where she first dropped her surname and where her melodic singing soon attracted nationwide attention. In 1960 she moved to Nashville and became the featured vocalist with Porter Wagoner on both his network television show and also on the GRAND OLE OPRY. She recorded for Columbia in the early '60s but she did not gain her first US country chart success, Let's Go All The Way, until 1964, by which time she had joined RCA. (The Columbia material is contained on her only Columbia album, COUNTRY'S FAVORITE; released in 1966 on their Harmony subsidiary, it is now highly sought after by collectors.) Further hits followed, including country Top 10's with Go Cat Go and I Wouldn't Buy A Used Car From Him and a Top 5 recording of The Game Of Triangles with Bobby Bare and Liz Anderson. Equally at home with up-tempo songs such as Truck Driving Woman, country monologues like Old Doc Brown or a country weepy on the lines of There Won't Be Any Patches In Heaven, she built up a considerable reputation. She married in 1967 and left Wagoner's show and though she continued to record regularly into the early '70s, she cut out most of her public appearances to concentrate on her home—a 1000 acre farm near Oklahoma City. (Wagoner filled the vacancy with a young girl called Dolly Parton). She recorded in the '80s and at the time of writing, her last chart entry was a very minor hit in 1982, with a duet recording with Claude Gray of her first hit Let's Go All The Way.