Career
Carson began her professional music career at age 17 in 1932, performing with her sisters Evelyn and Eva Alaine (AKA: Judy Martin) Overstake as the Three Little Maids on WLS-AM's National Barn Dance in Chicago. Carson also performed briefly as Winnie in the trio Winnie, Lou, and Sally (WLS). The Overstake sisters also performed as The Little Country Girls.
From 1938 to 1939 she recorded under the name Lucille Lee with the Sweet Violet Boys, also known as The Prairie Ramblers.
Fashioning herself as a 20th-century Annie Oakley, Overstake assumed the name Jenny Lou Carson in September 1939. She became an expert sharpshooter and learned to spin a rope and manipulate a bullwhip. She toured the state of Texas putting on her cowgirl show and singing with her partner Texas Tommy.
During World War II she wrote popular songs about soldier boys and home. She was known as the “Radio Chin-Up Girl” and received lots of fan letters from servicemen and their families.
Jenny Lou Carson authored "Jealous Heart" for Tex Ritter, a song that stayed on the hit charts for 23 weeks in 1945, and "You Two-Timed Me Once Too Often", the first top country hit written by a woman, which stayed at No. 1 on the country chart for 11 weeks in 1945.
Carson wrote a great many songs for a number of country music stars such as Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Ernest Tubb and Red Foley, who had married her sister Eva. She co-wrote with Al Hill, a pseudonym used by Fred Wise, Kathleen Twomey, and Ben Weisman the 1954 popular hit "Let Me Go, Lover!", first performed by 18 year old Joan Weber and subsequently recorded by Hank Snow, Teresa Brewer, Peggy Lee, Patti Page, and Sunny Gale.
Her song catalog contains over 170 songs which have been professionally recorded by over 180 artists.
In 1971 she was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Read more about this topic: Jenny Lou Carson
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