Naomi Judd
Troubled country singer and songwriter who found stardom duetting with her daughter Wynonna
NAOMI JUDD, who has died aged 76, was one of country music’s most flamboyant and successful stars, selling over 30 million albums, enjoying a string of hit singles and winning five Grammy Awards after forming the Judds with her daughter.
A single mother of two struggling to bring up two young girls while training to be a nurse and living on welfare cheques in a modest cabin in East Kentucky, she gave her rebellious teenage daughter Christina a cheap guitar as a way of keeping the peace and finding common ground between them.
Isolated in their mountain home with no television, phone or outside means of entertainment, they began to sing together some of the old Appalachian ballads and gospel songs that Naomi – who was then Diana Judd – had learnt in childhood.
Fuelled by their natural harmonies, a mutual love of the spotlight and no little ambition, they moved to California, started singing in the breaks at a restaurant where Naomi waited tables, and re-branded themselves as Naomi and Wynonna Judd, turning heads with their colourful costumes, vibrant personalities and vivid songs of ordinary people.
In 1979 it led them to try their luck in Nashville – country-music capital of the USA – where Naomi hawked around a primitive demo tape she had made with Wynonna on a cheap recorder. Penniless, and rejected by every record company she approached, the determined and driven Naomi finally managed to be hired for a regular slot on a local radio show, when she and Wynonna sang as the Soap Sisters.
But her biggest break came through her work as a nurse, when she discovered that one of her hospital patients was the daughter of the record producer Brent Maher, who listened to her rough tape and organised a live audition at RCA Records. Within an hour of the audition the Judds had their first record contract.
With Maher producing, they scored their first No 1 country hit in 1984 with Mama He’s Crazy, and their first three studio albums – Why Not Me, Rockin’ With Rhythm and Heartland all topped the US country charts, and their freshness and vitality won widespread credit for revitalising country music and taking it to a younger audience.
Designing their own colourful costumes full of rhinestone and glitter, the Judds went on to become Nashville royalty, with 15 No 1 singles and numerous awards, as songs like Girls Night Out, Grandpa (Tell Me ’Bout the Good Ole Days), Cry Myself to Sleep and, latterly, Love Can Build a Bridge confirmed their unique dynamic. They lived a glitzy lifestyle, toured in a state-of-the-art bus they called the Dream Chaser, and bought farms in Tennessee.
Yet triumph was tainted by many underlying problems. The blend of Naomi’s sweeter, gentler voice and Wynonna’s rockier, more bluesy style was key to their crossover appeal, but they were competitive, too, and the sharp personality clash between the neat and punctual Naomi and the carefree Wynonna sparked a tempestuous relationship which occasionally spilled over into bitter arguments on stage and in interviews. “Somebody once described it as tying two cat tails together and throwing it over a clothes line,” said Naomi. “It was both a blessing and a curse.”
In addition, Naomi struggled with depression and health problems, and in 1990 announced at a tearful press conference that she was retiring due to contracting hepatitis C, an infection she thought she had incurred during her work as a nurse.
They bowed out with a 124-date farewell tour through 1991, after which Naomi’s depression intensified, and she was at one point admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She founded the Naomi Judd Education and Research Fund to raise awareness of hepatitis C and gave lectures on the subject, going on to write a 2016 book, River of Time: My Descent Into Depression and How I Emerged With Hope, in which she revealed, among other things, how she had been abused as a child by an uncle and was raped by a drug addict in Los Angeles.
Diana Ellen Judd was born on January 11 1946 in Ashland, Kentucky, the daughter of the owner of a petrol station and a riverboat cook, Charles and Pauline Judd; she grew up as a Grade A student with a love of acting and listening to country music on the Grand Ole Opry radio show.
At 17, while still at high school, she became pregnant with Wynonna but was abandoned by the father, Charles Jordan. She went on to marry a salesman, Michael Ciminella, and had her second daughter, Ashley, who became a successful Hollywood actress.
The marriage ended in 1971 and, reeling from her parents’ divorce and the death of her younger brother Brian, she was left to bring up her daughters alone, moving to San Francisco and then Nashville. It was there she met her second husband, the musician Larry Strickland, a former backing singer for Elvis Presley, marrying him in 1989.
She made her stage comeback at a Judds reunion concert in 1998, and went on to have her own TV talk show, wrote several self-help books, appeared in the films A Holiday Romance and The Killing Time, talked frankly of her battles with depression and involved herself with related charities.
Plans were going ahead for a large-scale Judds tour this autumn, and the day after she died, by her own hand, she was due to attend a show inducting the Judds into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Her tearful daughters accepted on her behalf.
Naomi Judd is survived by her husband Larry Strickland and her daughters Wynonna and Ashley.
Naomi Judd, born January 11 1946, died April 30 2022