Early Life
Constance June Meador was born in Elkhart, Indiana, the daughter of Hobart and Wilma Meador. Her parents were originally from West Virginia, and when Smith was five months old, the family returned there. They would later move to Dungannon, Ohio. Her father was abusive when she was a child, which would eventually cause her to suffer a mental breakdown when she was a teenager. When she was seven, her mother divorced her father and remarried Tom Clark, who had eight children, along with the five additional children Smith's mother previously had. The couple would eventually have two more children together, which in total added up to fourteen children, including Smith. As a child, Smith was surrounded by music. Her stepfather played mandolin, while her brother played fiddle, and her other brother played guitar. On Saturday nights Smith would listen to the Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast. While she was a teenager, Smith was injured in a lawnmower accident, which nearly cut her leg off. While in the hospital recovering, she was given a guitar and learned how to play different chords. Following the recovery, she began to perform in various local talent contests. In 1959, Smith graduated from Salem-Liberty High School as the class salutatorian.
In August 1963, she entered a talent contest at the Frontier Ranch country music park near Columbus, Ohio. Performing Jean Shepard's "I Thought of You", Smith won the talent contest and five silver dollars. That day at the park, country artist Bill Anderson heard Smith perform and was impressed by her voice. In January 1964, Smith ran into Anderson again at a country music package concert, where he invited her to perform with him on Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree program in Nashville, Tennessee. After performing on the program, Smith returned to Nashville that May to record demos by Anderson that he planned on pitching to other country artists. Anderson's manager Hubert Long brought the demo recording to RCA Victor Records, where producer Chet Atkins heard it. Also impressed by her vocals, Atkins offered Smith a recording contract, and she eventually signed with the label on June 24, 1964.
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