Reba McEntire, the world's top-selling country female artist, has a talking voice straight out of The Beverly Hillbillies. It's even more accentuated across a telephone line from San Francisco ("San Francisco, California," she says, somewhat unnecessarily), where Reba is sitting in her hotel suite, catching up on work, checking her e-mails and penning what she describes, Grandma Clampet-style, as a "chicken soup book. Lots of stories, anecdotes, philosophy of life, things like that".
It is far from the way she was raised, this lifestyle of e-mails, book writing, fancy hotels, award collecting, and a reputation as having more business savvy than most female country stars.
Having gone from "chicken soup" chronicler to corporate figurehead in the space of 20 years, Reba has outsold the likes of Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn. With over 40 million album sales, 25 number one singles and an autobiography, Reba: My Story (which was in the New York Times best-seller list for almost four months), it's safe to say that Reba is a superstar. But only in America. Why is she so unknown this side of the Atlantic?
"Timing is everything," the 44-year-old country singer says, with all the confidence of a person who has learned from her mistakes. "When I came over to the UK previously, in 1989, there wasn't the same feeling of commitment with record companies. When I toured then, there were no records in the shops, and no promotion. So we decided we wouldn't come back and waste everyone's time until we knew that the record label was behind us. Now the label is, and we have its full, undivided attention. We're coming back. Everyone's excited." McEntire comes from an authentic rodeo family - her grandfather was a celebrity on America's national rodeo circuit. Raised on an 8,000-acre ranch in Oklahoma, she began her career as a rodeo barrel racer. Those blood, sweat and tears days, she says, were a perfect introduction to her current position as a music industry power broker. Tellingly, Reba's three siblings are also involved in the music industry.
"The rodeoing, the ranching. and growing up on the ranch in south-eastern Oklahoma - it was following instructions, and that's what I've been doing for years. Some days now it's long hours, some days it's short hours, but you have to do what you're supposed to do, and if you say you're going to do something you go and do it. It's pretty much the same thing as I did back then, but it's a lot nicer. The accommodation is a lot nicer, and the food is a lot nicer. Not to say that my momma's cookin' was bad - just that this is a little fancier." It seems that there was a healthy familial sense of discipline back then? "Very much. There were four kids in the family. We were the ones on horseback, working the cattle. Daddy supervised everything. We were what daddy called his `hired hands'. He ran cross-bred steers, and we were the ones who worked the place. He bought cattle in the spring, and we took care of them, doctored them, fed them and sold them in the fall. We would gather them in the mountains and the hills, and get them to the pens. Momma put them on the weighing scales, we would weigh them, and put them on the trucks.
"It sounds romantic, but it was hard work and long hours. People would ask daddy about all his kids being in the music business, and he would say that he lost the best hired hands he ever had in his life to it. But he sure is proud of us." All the ranchin', ropin', ridin' and rodeoin' connected with the old country and western tradition that Reba is still, tentatively, a part of. While she has been described (not unjustifiably) as the Celine Dion of new country, there is a part of her music which maintains traditional mountain techniques. Note-bending, twirling, trilling and even a slight yodel give her voice added depth and authenticity. Place this next to her Broadway-style, multi-costume change stage show, and it looks like a slightly saccharine entertainment package, a notch or two down from the crossover extravaganza of Garth Brooks. Put this to Reba, however, and she will disagree.
"I don't think so!" she exclaims, before going down a gear into showbiz cliche. "It's an emotional roller coaster. The songs are the stars of the show. I've been blessed with getting songs from some of the best writers in the business. They take precedent. It showcases the songs, and basically everyone on stage is having fun. It doesn't have the rowdiness of Garth." What Reba's stage show lacks in rowdiness, it makes up for in image. Reba has said that if she didn't have a career in music, she would have a weight problem. Looking years younger than her age (assisted by the judicious nip and strategic tuck of cosmetic surgery), Reba was faithful to her workout programme up to a year ago.
"My regimen is strict now. It's fruit and vegetables and a little bit of carbohydrate from midnight to lunch. I watch what I eat, but my exercise programme is what I do on stage. I guess I'm just too lazy to work out. It's a routine I just can't stay faithful to. It's not that I'm too busy for it, it's just that I don't like it. It hurts! I worked out last week, and I was sore for three days after. I could barely crawl out of bed. Bad for my stagecraft!" A teaching certificate obtained in her early twenties was a contingency plan more than anything else. By this time, Reba was ensconced in Nashville with her mother and her brother, Pake. She had travelled there at the invitation of the honky-tonk singer Red Steagall, who had heard her sing the US national anthem at the National Rodeo Finals in Oklahoma City in 1974. Demo tapes were recorded in a traditional style, and although they predicted the stripped-down new country trends of the next decade, they failed to tickle the charts.
Reba had also married the champion steer wrestler, Charlie Battles. Come 1983, she was still pulling a horse trailer with a 4x4, and occasionally opening a string of country package shows. The novelty of Nashville might have worn out, but not Reba's determination. Despite her best efforts, though, she was struggling to make enough money to live. An outsider, a greenhorn and an Oklahoma ranch-wife, Reba - a firm believer in fate - often wondered what would have happened if Red Steagall hadn't showed up at the rodeo finals.
"I was not in any hurry to go to Nashville," she claims. "It just worked out that that was the time to go. Those early years were hard work. I was doing a lot of PR and press. I was totally unknown, so I had to bide my time, and keep working, doing jobs that nobody else wanted to do."
Reba's first single, I Don't Want To Be A One Night Stand, was released in 1976, but it wasn't until the early 1980s when she had her first number one record, Can't Even Get The Blues, that her years of struggle ended.
"When I got to number one, it was a day of celebration with all my friends who had got me there. Red Steagall's advice to me from the very beginning was to surround myself with good people, to stay away from people who would drag me down, who would steer me the wrong way. That was very important advice." In 1987, Reba divorced her first husband. Two years later, she wed her steel guitarist and road manager Narvel Blackstock. One of the results of this union was a more hands-on business approach to her career. She doesn't seem to have looked back since.
But what of the teaching certificate? Will that forever gather dust, or - now that Shania Twain looks set to break Reba's hold on the title of best-selling female country artist in the world - does she think she might have need of it? "As a student teacher, I was way too strict and not very understanding," Reba says with a sparkle in her torch'n'twang voice. "All the kids back in Oklahoma buy my records as soon as they come out so that I won't have to teach 'em at school."
Moments & Memories The Best Of Reba McEntire (Universal) is currently on release. Reba McEntire plays The Point on January 11th.
