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In September 1985, a New York Times story lamented the downfall of country music’s established artists and the hackneyed “Nashville Sound,” but assistance was already on the horizon. Why Not Me, the 1984 debut album by the mother-daughter duo the Judds, topped the US country album chart, amassed multimillion-dollar sales, and produced three №1 country singles, Why Not Me, Girls’ Night Out, and Love Is Alive Naomi Judd
Naomi Judd, who died at the age of 76 after suffering from depression and mental illness, was ready to top the country charts with the follow-up album Rockin’ With the Rhythm with her daughter Wynonna. It would also produce three other number-one singles. To their surprise, the Judds were nominated for best new artist at the 1985 Grammy Awards, along with major pop performers like Cyndi Lauper and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.
The Judds were not alone in 1986 when a slew of “New Traditionalists” — including Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, and Dwight Yoakam — released their first albums and helped revitalize Nashville. But the Judds’ familial closeness provided them with something unique. Naomi Judd and Wynonna had listened to country music’s great sister acts, like the Delmore Brothers, the Everly Brothers, the Boswell Sisters, and the Andrews Sisters.
The Judds’ tones created a naturally organic blend. The combination of Wynonna’s forceful and bluesy voice and Naomi Judd’s softer tone produced a recognizable and commercially enticing sound. With tunes that fused bluegrass, folk, early rock’n’roll, and even a touch of bebop and lyrics that often empathized with the hardships of small-town, working-class women, the Judds were a logical addition to the country’s legacy of the dynamic female singers like Tammy Wynette and Patsy Cline.
However, their combined career was abruptly cut short. Naomi Judd revealed her hepatitis C diagnosis in 1990, and the Judds ceased performing the following year (though they would reunite for some one-off shows, and mounted the Power to Change t0ur in 2000 and the Last Encore T0ur in 2010–11). They had 14 №1 singles on the country chart, and their six albums had sold more than 20 million copies, making them the most successful country duo in history at the time. They were awarded five Grammys, nine Country Music Association awards, and seven Academy of Country Music awards.
Naomi Judd was born Diana Judd in Ashland, Kentucky, to Charles Judd, an owner of a gas station, and Pauline (née Oliver), a daughter on a Mississippi riverboat. She believes that her uncle’s sexual assault of her at age three contributed to her history of sadness.
At the age of 17, she got pregnant with Charles Jordan, who then abandoned her. In 1964, she wed Michael Ciminella. The birth of Wynonna later that year prevented Naomi Judd from attending her high school graduation ceremony. In 1965, her younger brother Brian died away due to Hodgkin’s illness, and her parents divorced. Naomi Judd’s second daughter, Ashley, was born in 1968 after she and her husband had relocated to Los Angeles and Naomi Judd had begun nursing school. Ashley would become a prominent film actor, appearing in films such as Heat, Double Jeopardy, and A Time To Kill.
Naomi Judd and Ciminella split in 1972, and she supported her daughter via a series of occupations. She left Los Angeles and moved to a cottage in Morrill, Kentucky, where she battled to make ends meet while Wynonna immersed herself in singing and learned to play the guitar.
Naomi Judd returned to Marin County, California, and enrolled in nursing school. She was sometimes irritated by Wynonna’s fixation with music (“she’d even use food money to purchase new guitar strings,” she said) until she realized that she and her daughter had a natural talent for singing in harmony. Naomi Judd remembered the impact of Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard’s coal-mining ballads. “As these ladies harmonized, it occurred to me that Wynonna and I couldn’t communicate verbally, but we could sing together.”
After Naomi Judd finished her nursing education in 1979, her family relocated to Nashville. Three years later, when the daughter of record producer Brent Maher was wounded in a car accident, Naomi Judd was assigned to care for her. An appreciative Maher consented to listen to Naomi Judd and Wynonna’s demo tape, and after hearing it, he accepted on the spot to become their producer.
He spent six months developing their sound, and after a live audition in 1983, RCA signed them. Early in 1984, they issued the six-track EP Wynonna & Naomi Judd, from which Mama He’s Crazy became their first number-one country single. Later that year, the song also featured on their first album.
Naomi launched the Naomi Judd Judd Education and Research Fund to raise awareness about hepatitis C and became an advocate for the American Liver Foundation after leaving the Judds. In 2005, she presented the Sunday morning discussion program Naomi Judd’s New Morning, and in 2008, she became a judge on the reality competition show Can You Duet. She married Larry Strickland (a former Elvis Presley backup singer) in 1989, and in 2017 they appeared on the reality culinary show My Kitchen Rules.
She has authored other books, such as River of Time: My Descent Into Depression and How I Emerged With Hope (2016). In a 2017 interview, she recounted how her mental health had drastically deteriorated after she stopped performing. “When I returned from the trip, I fell into a deep, dark, and completely terrible pit from which I was unable to escape. Two years were spent on my sofa
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The Judds had been planning a fall concert tour.
Her surviving relatives include her spouse and daughters.
Naomi Judd (Diana Ellen Judd), singer and composer, was born on January 11, 1946, and died away on April 30, 2022
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