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Panel: The Kid’s Got Talent: Child Stardom in the Music Business, with Brenda Lee, Marty Stuart, and Tanya Tucker

Special Program

When Tanya Tucker was a young girl, her father, Beau Tucker, took her to a Grand Ole Opry performance. As they sat in the pews of the Ryman Auditorium watching the performers, her father leaned over and asked, "Wouldn't you rather be up there doing it than out here watching it?"

Tucker never again sat in an audience, she told a standing-room-only crowd in the Ford Theater of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. However, she has been performing on concert stages now for forty years.

Tucker joined Brenda Lee and Marty Stuart-all of whom began their entertainment careers as children-for a Saturday afternoon museum program, The Kid's Got Talent: Child Stardom in the Music Business. The program was presented in conjunction with the museum exhibition Brenda Lee: Dynamite, Presented by the Great American Country Television Network.

Throughout the eighty-minute program, the three stars shared jokes, praised each other's tenacity, and provided extraordinary insight into the pressures and pleasures that go hand-in-hand with becoming a successful entertainer at an early age.  As the three spoke, vintage photographs of the stars in their younger years appeared on a large screen behind them, and each one was featured in a TV clip of a performance from early in their careers.

At one point, the panelists were asked if they were ever shy in their lives. "No!" Lee blurted. "Never shy," Tucker chimed in. Then Stuart said, "What's that old line, 'Every time you open a refrigerator and the light hits you, you do ten minutes?'" All three then leaned in together and laughed heartily.

Jay Orr, vice president of museum programs, set the stage before introducing the stars. "To see a precocious youngster step into the spotlight and shine, encouraged by family and professionals alike, is a great marvel," Orr said. "We shake our heads in wonder when talent manifests itself early, full-blown, without years of training and development. Stardom and celebrity at any age can be a strong test of character."

Orr then introduced the guests, acknowledging their hands-on expertise on the subject. Lee began appearing on radio and television at age five; by eleven, she was a regular on the network TV show Ozark Jubilee, and she signed her first recording contract that year. At fifteen, she achieved her first #1 hit, "I'm Sorry." She's now the only woman elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Stuart left his home in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to tour fulltime as a mandolinist in Lester Flatt's band, the Nashville Grass. He went on tour as Johnny Cash's guitarist and issued his first solo album in 1982. Stuart went on to earn four gold albums and six Top Ten singles, and today tours with his band, the Fabulous Superlatives, and hosts his own TV program, The Marty Stuart Show, on cable channel RFD.

Tucker signed with Columbia Records in 1972 at age thirteen, scoring her first #1 hit, "Delta Dawn," that spring and making her Grand Ole Opry debut that summer.  By her thirty-sixth birthday, she had attained more than fifty chart singles, and in 1991 she was named the CMA's Female Vocalist of the Year.

"My Daddy told me, 'You've got two strikes against you: One, you're female; the second one, you're a young female,'" Tucker recalled. Because of that, she would have to put twice as much emotion into her songs, her father said, to convince the skeptics.

The trio shared stories about the sacrifices of parents, about being snuck into the back doors of casinos and nightclubs, about managers and record companies, about stars who mentored them and those who discouraged them, about missing school and trying to study on the road, and about going onstage while ill.

"I wish I knew who coined the phrase, 'The show must go on,'" Lee said. "I'd kill him."

As for education, Stuart talked about a short trip while playing with the Sullivan Family Gospel Singers where they stopped at a gas station famous for a monkey that would smoke if thrown a cigarette, and how at the church concert a snake-handler stood up to participate in the service. "As I went to sleep that night, I thought, 'Yesterday I was at the house cutting grass with Mom and Daddy and my sis. Today I saw a chain-smoking money and a guy handling snakes at a church. I think I can do this. This is my life!'"

When it came time to return to school that fall, Stuart said, "I was a sorry excuse for a student." He tried to take correspondence courses to study while traveling with Flatt's band. One day when studying on the bus, he interrupted a poker game and asked, "Can somebody tell me what a pronoun is?" Flatt responded, "Let's see, I believe that goes on a tractor." Then turned back to the game.

"I threw my book up and said, 'That's it,'" Stuart recalled. "That's when I graduated and became a 'road scholar' that day."

Tucker remembered getting teased by other students. At first, they mocked her songs, singing, "Delta Sue, what's that poo I smell on you?" Later, they started getting physical, at which point her father taught her to box. "Country music just wasn't cool back then at that age," Tucker said.

They also encouraged young stars to follow their own creative muse rather than fit into trends, and to manage their money well. "Nowadays I think it's a lot easier," Tucker said. "They know what to do with young acts. Look at Taylor Swift. When I came to Nashville, they didn't know what to do with me."

Stuart quoted his wife, country singer Connie Smith, as saying, "People are not comfortable with something they can't control. There's a lot of wisdom in that."

At the same time, the panelists all emphasized that young stars need older mentors from within the industry to help guide them. "The country music family took me in," Stuart said. "We had access to wisdom and to people in ways that young stars today will never experience."

Tucker agreed. "I feel sorry for some of these young acts, because they didn't have the opportunity to be around some of the greats we've been around," she said.

Which prompted Stuart to say, "That's where Taylor Swift needs time with you. I mean that. It's our turn now, and it's our responsibility and our job to hand it to the next generation."

-Michael McCall