Early Life and Rise To Fame
Spears was born in Beaumont, Texas, United States. She made her professional debut at age 13 at a country music concert in Houston, Texas. She was the great aunt of Kayla Choate. She cut her first single, called "Too Old For Toys, Too Young For Boys," while she was still a teenager. It was released by the independent record label, Abbot Records, under the name 'Billie Jean Moore'. She also performed on the Louisiana Hayride at 13. After graduating from high school, she sang in nightclubs and sought a record deal. Spears' early career was orchestrated by the country/rockabilly songwriter, Jack Rhodes. Working out of his makeshift recording studio, Rhodes took it upon himself to provide Spears with material and clout in her early years. Spears moved from Texas to Nashville, Tennessee in 1964. She gained her first recording contract with United Artists Records, and worked with producer Kelso Herston. Her first singles brought her little success. Soon her producer moved over to Capitol Records and Spears followed. She was placed under contract by the label in 1968.
Read more about this topic: Billie Jo Spears
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, rise and/or fame:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life ... can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately rise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones.... Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate,—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”M”Here lies”;Mwhy do they not sometimes write, There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)