Melba Montgomery
While a successful singer in her own right, Melba Montgomery is perhaps best remembered in tandem with her string of duet recordings with the likes of George Jones, Charlie Louvin, and Gene Pitney. Born October 14, 1938, in Iron City, TN, and raised in Florence, AL, Montgomery gained her first exposure to music through her father, a fiddler and guitarist who taught vocal lessons at the town's Methodist church. At the age of ten, she was given her own guitar, and a decade later, she and her brother won an amateur talent contest held at Nashville radio station WSM's Studio C, which then housed the Grand Ole Opry. Montgomery's performance so impressed contest judge Roy Acuff that he asked the young singer to replace his departing lead vocalist June Webb; she accepted and toured with Acuff for the next four years.
After going solo in 1962, Montgomery released a self-titled LP and then teamed for a series of duets with Jones. Their first joint effort, a rendition of Montgomery's self-penned "We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds," reached the Top Three in 1963, and the follow-up, "What's in Our Heart"/"Let's Invite Them Over," was a two-sided Top 20 hit. Between 1963 and 1967, the Jones-Montgomery team generated a total of five Top 40 hits and two LPs (1966's Close Together and 1967's Let's Get Together), and while Montgomery maintained a successful solo career during the same period, she remained best known as a duet singer and so recorded an album of collaborations with Pitney titled Being Together in 1966.
After a few minor solo hits in the late '60s, in 1970 Montgomery found new partners in Louvin and producer Pete Drake. The duo's first hit, "Something to Brag About," was also their biggest, and after a string of singles and a 1971 album -- also titled Something to Brag About -- she and Louvin parted ways, although Montgomery did continue on with Drake. In 1974, he produced her lone number one hit, a rendition of Harlan Howard's "No Charge," culled from the LP No Charge. While she continued to record throughout the decade, subsequent albums like Don't Let the Good Times Fool You and Aching Breaking Heart found little commercial success, and by the 1980s Montgomery focused largely on touring and appearing at festivals. In 1988, she even published a cookbook of family recipes.
© Jason Ankeny /TiVo
Similar artists
Discography
14 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller
-
Singing What's In Our Hearts
George Jones, Melba Montgomery
Country - Released by EMI Music Nashville (ERN) on 1/01/1963
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Golden Moments
Country - Released by CLASSIC WORLD ENTERTAINMENT on 30/01/2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Vintage Collections
George Jones, Melba Montgomery
Country - Released by Capitol Nashville on 1/01/1996
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Melba Montgomery: Studio 102 Essentials
Country - Released by Suite 102 on 27/05/2008
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Bluegrass Hootenanny
George Jones, Melba Montgomery
Country - Released by EMI Music Nashville (ERN) on 31/05/2019
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
American Portraits: Melba Montgomery
Country - Released by Dockland Music on 31/07/2020
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Melba Montgomery Country Legends
Country - Released by StreamWorld Entertainment Classics on 2/01/2001
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
Things That Keep You Going
Country - Released by RPM Music on 14/12/2010
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
I Still Care
Country - Released by Good Time Records on 8/07/2022
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
America's No.One Country and Western Girl Singer
Country - Released by Old Stars on 9/06/2017
16-Bit CD Quality 44.1 kHz - Stereo -
-
America's Number One Country and Western Girl Singer (Hd Remastered)
Country - Released by Reborn recordings on 26/06/2019
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo -
Down Home (Hd Remastered)
Country - Released by Reborn recordings on 26/06/2019
24-Bit 48.0 kHz - Stereo