Melba Montgomery

Regarded as one of the greatest female stylists of country music’s “golden age,” Melba Montgomery has made her mark as a matchless vocalist as well as an enduring songwriting talent.

As a singer, Montgomery immortalized country’s all-time motherhood classic “No Charge.” She also became the first hit duet partner of the legendary George Jones. Montgomery originated the delightful hillbilly romp “Something to Brag About” as a duet with Charlie Louvin. It was memorably revived by Willie Nelson and Mary Kay Place, among others. As a studio singer, she has contributed harmony background vocals to recordings by Leon Russell, Randy Travis, B.J. Thomas, Emmylou Harris and other stars.

As a songwriter, she has had more than 100 compositions recorded. Melba Montgomery wrote “We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds.” That 1963 hit duet with George Jones has since been recorded by more than two dozen other stars. She co-wrote “What Do You Say to That,” which was a smash hit for George Strait in 1999. Her 1970song “Don’t Keep Me Lonely Too Long” has been recorded by Connie Smith, Skeeter Davis, Eddy Arnold, Dottie West, George Jones and others. More than 50 different artists have recorded Melba Montgomery songs.

If anyone was ever born to be a country artist, it’s Melba Joyce Montgomery. A native of Iron City, Tennessee (b. 1938), she was raised near Florence, Alabama, as the daughter of a farmer fiddler and guitarist who taught singing in the local Methodist Church. Her dad gave her a guitar when she was 10 years old. When they weren’t working in the fields, the seven children all grew up singing harmonies and playing banjo, fiddle or guitar. Like Melba, her brothers Carl and Earl “Peanut” Montgomery also became successful country songwriters.

When she was 19, she traveled to Nashville to be in a talent contest staged by WSM radio, the home of the Grand Ole Opry. Shewon the contest. The Opry’s Roy Acuff was so impressed with her talent that he invited her to become the “girl singer” in his touring troupe. She remained with the star’s show for the next four years. Her first recording sessions were as a harmony vocalist on Acuff’s records for the Hickory label.

Melba Montgomery’s first solo efforts were recorded for the company owned by the Opry duo Lonzo & Oscar, Nugget Records. In1962, she was signed by United Artists Records and teamed up with George Jones for a series of landmark duets. The honky-tonk king had previously recorded duets with Virginia Spurlock, Jeanette Hicks,Brenda Carter and Margie Singleton. But Melba Montgomery’s drawling, soulful, Southern-accented phrasing was the perfect foil for his distinctive, bent-note vocals. After the team hit the top-10 in 1963 with her song “We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds,” she debuted on the country charts as a solo artist with “Hall of Shame” later that year.

The Jones/Montgomery team charted five more times in1964-67. She wrote or co-wrote a dozen songs for their six duet albums during that same time period, including ‘Simply Divine,” “Until Then” and “Lovin’ on Easy Street.” Her superb singing especially enlivened their “Flame In My Heart,” “Close Together,” “Party Pickin’”and the entire contents of their Bluegrass Hootenanny LP of 1964.

The first Montgomery solo LP also appeared that year. Melba Montgomery was succeeded by Down Home, I Can’t Get Used to Being Lonely and Country Girl in 1964-66. She had top-40 solo country hits with “The Greatest One of All” and “Please Be My Love” in 1964.

She switched to the Music or Records label, which is when she teamed with her second duet partner, pop star Gene Pitney. They issued their Being Together album in 1965 and scored a hit with “Baby Ain’t That Fine” the following year. Her next stop was Capitol Records,where she was teamed with Charlie Louvin. Their 1970-71 hits included the wildly witty Bobby Braddock song “Something to Brag About” and a country version of the Brook Benton/Dinah Washington r&b smash “Baby, You’ve Got What It Takes.” Her uniformly fine solo efforts for Capitol made few waves.

But her songwriting remained much admired by her peers.During the next few years, Bobby Bare, Hank Williams Jr., Conway Twitty, Kris Krisofferson & Rita Coolidge, Bill Anderson, Roy Drusky and Del Reeves recorded her works. So did several others.

Elektra Records signed Montgomery in 1973. She debuted on thelabel with the top-40 success “Wrap Your Love Around Me,” which she co-wrote. The following year, she performed Harlan Howard’s emotional “No Charge.” By the time she finished recording the motherhood anthem, she was weeping. So were the session musicians.The song hit No. 1 on the charts on Mother’s Day in 1974. Black gospel queen Shirley Caesar picked up the song to give it another hit version.Tammy Wynette, J.J. Barrie and Johnny Cash are among the others who recorded “No Charge.”

“Don’t Let the Good Times Fool You” (1975). “Searchin’” (1975)and her version of the pop hit “Angel of the Morning” (1977) were her other top-40 successes of the 1970s. In 1977, Mary Kay Place and Willie Nelson brought back “Something to Brag About” and scored an even bigger hit with it than Montgomery did with Charlie Louvin 10 years earlier.

By 1986, Melba Montgomery had placed 30 songs on country’s popularity charts and released 26 albums — 17 solo efforts and nine duet collections with Jones, Pitney and Louvin. Her recording career was winding down, but she blossomed as a songwriter like never before as she aged into her 50s and 60s. A host of country stars of the1990s lined up to record her works — Patty Loveless & Travis Tritt,Tracy Byrd, Ricochet, Sara Evans, Emmylou Harris & Carl Jackson, John Prine, David Ball, Terri Clark, Randy Travis, The Derailers, Reba McEntire and Vern Gosdin, among them.

During that decade and for the next 20 years, she co-wrote with Music Row’s “young guns” — Jim Lauderdale, Kostas, Leslie Satcher, Billy Yates, Larry Cordle, Jerry Salley and their peers. In 1999, superstar George Strait neared the top of the charts with the Lauderdale/Montgomery song “What Do You Say to That.” Her songs also found favor with bluegrass music’s elite — The Lonesome RiverBand, Rhonda Vincent, Lost Highway, Grass towne and more.

Montgomery published a cookbook in 1988 and issued additional solo albums in 1992, 1997, 2008 and 2010. She also appeared on Ralph Stanley’s award-winning, all-star 2001 CD Clinch Mountain Sweethearts. Following the death of her husband, guitarist/songwriter Jack Solomon, Melba Montgomery retired in 2015.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Alive Hospice, the Shriner’s Hospital for Children, or The Dementia Society of America.