Reba McEntire Biography

Country music superstar Reba McEntire has enjoyed huge commercial and critical success in 1980s and 90s. She proved to be a key figure in the successful crossover of country music into the pop mainstream, and later showed herself a capable character player in features and on TV. The product of a small-town upbringing in Oklahoma, McEntire competed on the rodeo circuit with her family and sang with her brother and sister as part of the teenaged Singing McEntires until she was signed by Mercury Records in the mid-70s. Achieving success by the end of the decade, she brought her rich, throbbing alto, with its distinctive Midwestern twang, to such country pop tunes as “I Can’t Even Get the Blues”. In the mid-80s McEntire sang several very traditional country songs like “How Blue” and plush ballads about broken romance including “Whoever’s in New England” and “He Broke Your Memory Last Night”. She continued her success into the 90s with her hard-hitting duet with Linda Davis, “Does He Love You” and other he-done-me-wrong songs like “For My Broken Heart.”

With her attractively forthright manner and her trademark voluminous, teased brunette hair, McEntire not only won many music industry awards and produced an impressive string of best-selling albums, but also made music videos and a great many TV variety and award show appearances. As with other country music stars, media visibility and the experience of putting over storytelling songs suggested the possibility of straight acting, and McEntire made her feature debut in the highly enjoyable revamp of 50s monster films, “Tremors” (1990). She has subsequently performed smoothly as the extravagant Texan mother candidate in “North” (1994) and in TV-movies such as “The Man from Left Field” (1993), opposite Burt Reynolds and as Annie Oakley in “Buffalo Girls” (CBS, 1995). The latter proved a nice warm-up for her 2001 Broadway debut as Annie Oakley in the hit revival of Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun.” McEntire received glowing notices not only for her beautifully singing but also for her deft comic timing and chemistry with leading man Brent Barrett.

McEntire began concentrating more television than film in the late-1990s, starring in several made-for-TV movies, including “Forever Love” (CBS, 1998) in which she played a loving wife and mother who slips into a stroke-induced coma only to awake twenty years later and try to assimilate herself back into the lives of her loves ones. In “Secrets of Giving” (CBS, 1999), she was a widow in 1905 struggling to keep her farm and few head of cattle while caring for her ailing 5-year-old son (Devon Alan). But a lone stranger (Thomas Ian Griffith) arrives out of the blue to help, making a deal with the town’s banker that puts his own future in jeopardy, but brightens the Christmas season for everyone else. McEntire then got her own sitcom, “Reba” (WB, 2001- ), playing a Texas soccer mom whose idyllic suburban life is rapidly falling apart around her after her husband leaves her for another woman and her teenaged daughter gets pregnant. Despite a previously crazed schedule of recording, touring and hosting “The Country Music Awards,” McEntire found it a blessing to have a regular schedule in which to live a normal family life. The show itself became a rare hit for the perpetually struggling WB, taking in a consistent 3 million viewers a week, as McEntire earned kudos with a nomination for a 2003 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Television Series – Musical or Comedy.

• Also Credited As:
  Reba Nell McEntire
• Born:
  on 03/28/1955 in McAlester, Oklahoma
• Job Titles:
  Singer, Actor, Rodeo performer

Family

• Brother: Del Stanley McEntire. older; sang with McEntire when they were teenagers as part of The Singing McEntires
• Father: Clark Vincent McEntire. born c. 1926
• Mother: Jacqueline McEntire.
• Sister: Alice Lynn McEntire. older
• Sister: Martha Susan McEntire. sang with McEntire when they were teenagers as part of The Singing McEntires; married to rodeo star Paul Luchsinger; has three children
• Son: Shelby Blackstock. born c. 1990

Education

• Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, Oklahoma, elementary student education and music, BA, 1976

Milestones

• 1974 Sang the national anthem at the National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City; was heard by Nashville-based songwriter Red Steagall, who convinced McEntire’s mother to cut a demo tape
• 1982 Earliest TV appearances include a cameo as herself in the CBS TV-movie, “Country Gold”
• 1983 Left Mercury Records
• 1984 Signed with MCA Records
• 1986 First TV hosting duties, “The 21st Annual Academy of Country Music Awards”
• 1990 Feature film acting debut, “Tremors”
• 1991 Made TV acting debut in the two-part NBC TV-movie, “The Luck of the draw: The Gambler Returns”, co-starring opposite Kenny Rogers
• 1991 Stayed behind in San Diego after giving a spring concert, suffering from bronchitis; airplane carrying her tour manager and seven members of her band crashed near the border of Mexico
• 1998 Received star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (September 18)
• 1998 Starred in CBS TV-movie “Forever Love”
• 2001 Starred in and executive produced the sitcom “Reba” for The WB; premiered in fall; earned a Golden Globe (2003) nomination
• 2001 Had featured role as a psychiatrist in the black comedy “One Night at McCool’s”
• 2001 Made Broadway debut as star of the hit revival of “Annie Get Your Gun”
• 2001 Signed to star in and executive produce a CBS adaptation of “Annie Get Your Gun”
• Formed and ran company, Starstruck Entertainment, with second husband Narvel Blackstock; began as booking, promotion and management company but later expanded into construction, trucking, travel and publishing concerns
• Grew up on a ranch owned by her father located just outside Kiowa, Oklahoma (population 873)
• Signed by Mercury Records
• Worked on the WPRA rodeo circuit for ten years, quarter-horse barrel racing