Barbara Mandrell Birthplace — Houston, Texas

Barbara Ann Mandrell was born on December 25, 1948, in Houston, Texas, to a musical family that recognised her talent early and cultivated it aggressively. She was performing steel guitar professionally by the age of eleven, appearing on television programmes and touring the west coast as a child prodigy. By her teens she was playing six instruments and appearing on the Grand Ole Opry. She was country music's most comprehensively accomplished multi-instrumentalist: steel guitar, banjo, saxophone, bass guitar, and mandolin were all in her repertoire alongside her vocals.

Mandrell became one of the dominant country stars of the late 1970s and early 1980s, winning the Country Music Association's Entertainer of the Year award twice consecutively (1980 and 1981) — the first woman to win it back-to-back. "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed," "If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want to Be Right)," "I Was Country When Country Wasn't Cool," and "Years" were among her biggest hits. She hosted a successful NBC variety television programme with her sisters from 1980 to 1982, reaching audiences well beyond country music's traditional base.

Houston and Texas acknowledge Mandrell as a native daughter, though Nashville was always the centre of her professional life. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2009. A serious automobile accident in 1984 interrupted her career and required years of recovery, but she returned to performing and recording with characteristic determination. She has lived in retirement in the Nashville area for many years.