Congratulations, Reba!

Sunday will be a big day for Reba McEntire, Jean Shepherd and Bobby Braddock. The three country music legends will be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

For all three, this is an honor decades in the making.

Reba has scored more than 20 #1 singles since "Can't Even Get the Blues" reached the peak in 1982. When told of her selection, she called it a "huge honor."

“When I was a young girl, we would take vacations to Nashville and tour the Country Music Hall of Fame.  And now, for me to be inducted, is a dream come true,”
she said.

A fellow Oklahoma native, Jean Shepherd scored a #1 with her first single, "A Dear John Letter" in 1953.  Over the next 22 years, she had nine more top-ten hits, and has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1955.

Bobby Braddock has written I don't know how many hit songs since the mid-1960s, but 13 of them have topped the Billboard country chart. "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", co-written by Curly Putnam and recorded by Tammy Wynette, was the first to go #1, in 1967. It was nominated for CMA Song of the Year in 1968.  Braddock and Putnam also wrote the classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today" for George Jones. It was CMA Song of the Year in both 1980 and '81, and is considered by many to be the "perfect" country song. More recent #1's include Toby Keith's "I Wanna Talk About Me", #12 for five weeks in 2005,  and Billy Currington's "People Are Crazy", the most-played song of 2009 on country music radio.

In announcing class of 2011 earlier this year, CMA Hall of Fame director Kyle Young rated the selections "particularly stunning,because the careers of Bobby Braddock, Jean Shepard and Reba McEntire represent an amazing rainbow of country music history. Their arc begins in country music’s 1950s golden age, spans the remaining half of the 20th Century, and extends into the here and now, with no end in sight.  Each had the courage of personal conviction; all created music that often spoke specifically to women, but also transcended gender to become universal; and each leaves a unique and indelible mark on country music’s past, present and future.”

The red-carpet induction ceremony will be held Sunday in Nashville.