Brenda Lee, aged 15, with her 1960 hit:
The spoken section in the middle may be tacky, but with that voice, who cares?
Her break into big-time show business came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 to appear on a Swainsboro radio station in order to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. An Augusta disc jockey persuaded Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley was as transfixed as everyone else who heard the huge voice coming from the tiny girl and immediately agreed to let her perform "Jambalaya" on stage that night, unrehearsed. Foley later recounted the moments following her introduction:
"I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. One foot started patting rhythm as though she was stomping out a prairie fire but not another muscle in that little body even as much as twitched. And when she did that trick of breaking her voice, it jarred me out of my trance enough to realize I'd forgotten to get off the stage. There I stood, after 26 years of supposedly learning how to conduct myself in front of an audience, with my mouth open two miles wide and a glassy stare in my eyes.”
The audience erupted in applause and refused to let her leave the stage until she had sung three more songs.
A photo of her first Nashville performance, aged 12.
Sweet Nothin's, with Dick Clark on the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show. February 13, 1960.
She was always popular in the UK, and Europe:
In 1962, while touring West Germany, she appeared at the famous Star-Club, Hamburg and the Beatles were her opening act.
Mick Hartley 
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