Early Life
Gretchen Wilson was born in Pocahontas, Illinois, to a 16-year-old mother. Her father left before she was two years old, and she and her mother lived in trailer parks and relative poverty. Wilson's mother worked as a waitress, and Wilson herself dropped out of the 9th grade at age 15 to work as a cook and bartender in rural Illinois.
Wilson began singing in small bars around the St. Louis, Missouri area at age 15. In 1991, Susie Osburn, a bar manager from Springfield, Missouri, went to St. Louis to find a new house band for her bar, the Townhouse. She found 18-year-old Wilson singing Patsy Cline covers so well that Osburn initially thought the singing was coming from a jukebox. Recognizing Wilson's talent, Osburn immediately convinced her and her band, Sam-A-Lama, to move to Springfield and play at the Townhouse. In her biography, Wilson says it was the offer of a lifetime. After playing the Townhouse for two years at six nights a week, Wilson moved back home to Pocahontas before continuing on to Nashville.
Read more about this topic: Gretchen Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.”
—Henry Reed (1914–1986)
“Unfortunately, life may sometimes seem unfair to middle children, some of whom feel like an afterthought to a brilliant older sibling and unable to captivate the family’s attention like the darling baby. Yet the middle position offers great training for the real world of lowered expectations, negotiation, and compromise. Middle children who often must break the mold set by an older sibling may thereby learn to challenge family values and seek their own identity.”
—Marianne E. Neifert (20th century)