Barbara Mandrell

Barbara Mandrell will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame this year, and following her speech at the induction announcement today, I thought to myself, “Wow, she must have had an incredible work ethic.” At the age of 11, she was playing steel guitar in the Las Vegas showrooms. One night she discovered that her steel bar was missing and calmly asked the audience for a drinking glass.

Mandrell is no stranger to the stage, following a successful NBC variety show in the early 1980s and huge country hits like “Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” and “I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.” As soon as she stepped to the podium at Wednesday’s (Feb. 4) press conference, she emotionally thanked God, noting, “He orchestrates our journeys if we let him.” Later, she emphasized the team effort behind her career, including musicians, producers and sound engineers, as well as the press.

she wasn’t considered under the age limit in such establishments. And in the summers away from high school, they’d go to Vietnam to play for the troops. Mandrell also recalled that her father bought a tour bus for the family when she was just 21 and that he always invested money back into the show. Certainly, the investment paid off she graciously pointed out Rose Lee Maphis, a West Coast country singer from the 1950s who, with husband Joe Maphis, gave Mandrell her first job.