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Factsheet

• Learned to read music and play the accordion by the age of 5.
• At 11, demonstrated the steel guitar at a music trade show in Chicago, where she was discovered by country performer Joe Maphis.
• Her family formed its own group when she was 14. A member of the band was drummer Ken Dudney, whom she would later marry.
• Signed with Columbia Records in 1969, scoring her first hit with a cover of Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long."
• Inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1972.
• After her family band broke up, she formed the Do-Rites with her sisters, Louise and Irlene.
• In 1979, won Country Music Association's Female Vocalist of the Year.
• Headlined the NBC variety series Barbara Mandrell & the Mandrell Sisters (1980-82).
• Was the first artist to win CMA Entertainer of the Year for two consecutive years (1980 and '81).
• Penned her autobiography, Get to the Heart: My Story (1990), which was later made into a TV movie, Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story (1997).