Biography

When Reba McEntire had her first single release in 1976 with "I Don't Want To Be A One-Night Stand," she didn't have any hesitation about hitting the road to tour. Though she lived then--and still lives now--on a cattle ranch near Chockie, Oklahoma, where she was born and raised, Reba had actually spent much of her early life travelling around .

"I'm a third-generation rodeo brat," she laughs. "My Daddy rodeoed and his daddy before him. I was a barrel racer myself until I gave it up for singin'. Now, I'm married to a rodeo cowboy. So I'm sorta used to travellin'.

"There were four kids, Mama and Daddy," she recalls. "We didn't have the fancy campers and pick-ups they do nowadays. We had an old Green Ford and we'd travel all night. Marna and Daddy 'Would sit up front. Me and Suzy were the smallest, so we'd have to share the floorbords. Alice and Pake got the back seat. That's the way we slept at night. It was fun to me, bein' a kid. I didn't know there was any better way to do it.

"My Mama always said to me, 'Reba, I'm living my life through you.' People used to say that my Mama could have been just as big as Patsy Cline if she'd had any breaks but she was teaching school and raising a family. It was unfair and unjust for her not to go on with her singing.

"Well,'' continues Reba, "God gave my mother a voice and my mother passed it on to me. I know that I can make it with my voice if I just use it."

Reba had her first taste of music when her Mama lead her and her two sisters and brother in singing while they were touring with their Dad to the rodeo. Reba was five years old when she belted out a chorus of "Jesus Loves Me" in the lobby of a Cheyenne, Wyoming hotel. "Someone gave me a nickel," she adds. "That just amazed me."

When an opportunity arose for Reba to sing the national anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City, she grabbed it, and there was no turning back. It was at that event, in her senior year at college, that she met her mentor, Red Steagall, who took her into the studio to cut a demo session that led to Reba signing with Mercury/Polygram Records in the fall of 1975. Her first single was released in 1976 and a self­titled debut LP appeared the following year.

In her five years with Mercury/PolyGram Records, Reba McEntire has had a number of hits, including ''Runaway Heart, '' ''Sweet Dreams, '' ''(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven,'' "I Can See Forever In Your Eyes" and "I Don’t Think Love Ought To Be That Way.”

Even with all her success, When Reba's not on the road promoting her records, you're still apt to find her in the world in which she grew up: some\Vhere off at a rodeo with her husband, Charlie Battles, himself a rodeo contestant she met shortly before she signed with Mercury/PolyGram, or helping out on their Oklahana cattle ranch.

Following the release of Reba McEntire, Reba realized a dream come true when she performed at the Grand Ole (pry in September 1977. It wasn't until her second album, Out of a Dream, that McEntire was established as a star to watch. That LP yielded four hit singles, each a large step toward Top Ten stature: "Sweet Dreams," "Last Night, Ev'ry Night, 11 "Runaway Heart" and "That Makes Two Of Us, 11 a duet with Jacky Ward. It was with Feel the Fire, though, her third album, that Reba finally fulfilled her vast potential, arriving hot on the heels of a Top 10 hit single, "(You Lift Me) Up To Heaven." Produced by Jerry Kennedy in Nashville, the album was a compilation of both new tunes and revital­ized old songs that catapulted Reba into the stardom she deserved.

"I always thought I'd get there sooner or later," she admits, "but I didn't expect it to turn out as fast as it did. I was sure excited about it all!!"

While the hits keep caning, with each of her records seeming to get higher in the charts than the one before, Reba's music ranains honest, sincere and open, which makes her a real rarity in today's pop world: a gifted songstress who is making it on her own without the current popular trappings.

On her newest album, Heart To Heart, produced once again by Jerry Kennedy, Reba McEntire takes the next step, with soaring, heart-warming vocals cutting through the swelling arrangements of "Indelibly Blue," "Only You (And You Alone)" and "Love By Love." The first single, "Today All Over Again," is Reba McEntire at her most down­home, transforming country music into her own distinctive means of expression. Heart To Heart should move Reba even more to the forefront of today's country artists.

When asked about any restrictions she experienced by being called a country artist, Reba just shrugged. "I’m a Country and Western singer," she says. "I can sing anything."

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