Peggy March Was a No. 1 Star at 15 — By 18, She Had Almost Nothing Left
At 15 years old, Peggy March had achieved something most singers never experience in an entire lifetime.
She had the No. 1 song in America.
“I Will Follow Him” turned the Pennsylvania teenager into an international star in 1963. Her face appeared in magazines, her records sold around the world, and suddenly “Little Peggy March” was one of the most famous teenage singers in pop music.
From the outside, it looked like a dream.
Behind the scenes, something was going terribly wrong.
Because Peggy was still a minor, control of her business and financial affairs had been placed in the hands of her manager, Russell Smith.
Peggy kept performing.
The records kept selling.
But she did not truly know what was happening to the money.
When she turned 18 and finally separated from Smith, she asked for an accounting of her finances.
What she discovered was devastating.
Years later, Peggy recalled that after becoming an international recording star, she was left with only about $500.
Even worse, she said there was a $12,000 judgment against her connected to a loan made to her manager — something she had known nothing about.
For a young woman who had spent her teenage years working around the world, it was an extraordinary shock.
But Peggy March's story did not end there.
While her American chart success was beginning to fade, something unexpected was happening in Europe.
Germany had embraced her.
In 1965, Peggy performed the German-language song “Mit 17 hat man noch Träume” — “At 17, You Still Have Dreams” — at the German Schlager Festival in Baden-Baden.
She won.
The song became a major success and eventually one of the recordings most closely associated with her European career.
There was something almost strangely appropriate about the title.
Peggy was still a teenager herself.
And after becoming famous extraordinarily young, she was about to discover that her first dream had come with consequences nobody had warned her about.
Instead of disappearing after her American breakthrough, she built another career.
She recorded in multiple languages, toured internationally, found major audiences in Germany and Japan, and eventually moved to Germany in 1969.
For many American listeners, Peggy March would always be the teenage girl who sang “I Will Follow Him.”
In Europe, she became much more than that.
She grew up in public, survived a painful financial lesson and created a career that continued long after the teenage-pop world that first made her famous had moved on.
That may be the more remarkable Peggy March story.
Becoming No. 1 at 15 was extraordinary.
Finding a way to begin again after discovering how little of that success she actually possessed may have required even more courage.
Barbara Mandrell Retired From Music at 18 — One Night at the Grand Ole Opry Changed Her Mind
Long before Barbara Mandrell became one of the biggest stars in country music, she had already decided her music career was over.
She was only 18.
That decision sounds almost impossible in hindsight.
Because Barbara Mandrell had been preparing for the stage practically since childhood.
Born in Houston on Christmas Day in 1948, she learned accordion and how to read music before entering first grade. After her family moved to California, she began studying steel guitar at about ten years old while also learning saxophone at school.
Then someone important noticed her.
Country guitarist Joe Maphis saw the young Mandrell performing at a music trade convention in 1960.
He was impressed enough to bring her into his Las Vegas act.
Barbara was still a child, yet she was already sharing a musical world populated by professional country performers.
Before long, she appeared on the Los Angeles television program Town Hall Party and joined a national package tour headlined by Johnny Cash.
By 14, she was performing with her family band at military bases in the United States and Asia. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
It looked as though music had already chosen her.
Then Barbara walked away.
She had fallen in love with Ken Dudney, the drummer in the Mandrell family band.
Dudney eventually joined the Navy and trained as a pilot.
The couple married in 1967.
Barbara decided that was enough.
At 18, she retired from music.
For someone who had spent much of her childhood performing, it was an extraordinary choice.
But the retirement did not last.
When Dudney was away with the Navy, Barbara visited her family in Tennessee.
One evening, she attended a taping of The Porter Wagoner Show before the Grand Ole Opry.
As Barbara watched the performers, something came back.
She leaned toward her father, Irby Mandrell.
She told him she could do what she was watching onstage.
More importantly, she wanted to do it again.
She asked whether he would manage her.
Her father believed in her.
The decision made that night changed everything. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Barbara soon signed with Columbia Records.
In 1969, she entered the Billboard country chart with her version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.”
More hits followed.
By 1972, she had joined the Grand Ole Opry — the same institution connected to the night that helped convince her to return.
Then the career accelerated.
“Sleeping Single in a Double Bed” reached No. 1.
Her version of “If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want to Be Right)” also topped the country chart.
But Mandrell was becoming more than a recording artist.
She could sing.
She could dance.
She could play multiple instruments.
And onstage, she could move between traditional country, pop, soul, gospel, and show-business spectacle without losing her identity.
By the beginning of the 1980s, Barbara Mandrell was everywhere.
From 1980 to 1982, she starred with her sisters Louise and Irlene on NBC’s Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, bringing country music into millions of American homes every week.
And the industry recognized what was happening.
The Country Music Association named Mandrell Entertainer of the Year in 1980.
Then she won again in 1981.
She became the first artist in CMA history to win the award in consecutive years. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
That same period produced the song that would become inseparable from her name.
“I Was Country When Country Wasn’t Cool.”
The song looked back at a time when openly loving country music was not always fashionable.
Then country culture exploded into the American mainstream.
George Jones appeared on the recording, and the song became another No. 1 country hit for Mandrell
The title almost seemed to describe Barbara herself.
She had been playing steel guitar as a child long before television superstardom.
She had toured before she was old enough to drive.
She had quit.
She had started again.
And she had reached the top.
Her life would still bring serious challenges.
In 1984, a devastating automobile accident left Mandrell with multiple injuries and required a long recovery.
Yet she returned again, continuing to record, tour, and act before eventually retiring from performing in 1997. Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
In 2009, Barbara Mandrell was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
It was a remarkable ending to a story that could easily have stopped decades earlier.
At 18, Barbara Mandrell thought she was finished with music.
Then she sat in an audience in Nashville and watched other performers doing what she had once done.
Something inside her changed.
She told her father she wanted another chance.
He believed her.
And the young woman who had retired before her career truly began eventually became one of country music’s defining entertainers.
