Reba McEntire Almost Quit Singing After Her Mother’s Death
deadline.comReba McEntire lost her passion for music after her mother’s death in 2020, she said in a Today show interview on Tuesday. The country icon told hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager about the sorrow she experienced after her mom, Jacqueline Smith, died from cancer at the age of 93.
She recalled telling her sister, Susie, “I said, ‘I just don’t think I’m going to do this anymore.’ [Susie] said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Sing.’ I said, ‘I always did it for Mama.’ She said, ‘Oh, you’ll get it back.'” Eventually, McEntire found a path back by remembering who started her out.
Her mother cultivated her and her siblings’ love of music The four of them were hailed as “the singing McEntires” during junior high and high school, she shared. “She was really encouraging for all of us kids, whatever we wanted to do,” McEntire said. “She taught us harmony.
Anytime anybody needed an opinion of who’s off, Mama would come in with her spatula after she was frying potatoes.” Once Smith gave her two cents, “She’d say, ‘Oh, that’s perfect,’ and she’d go back in and keep frying potatoes,” the singer said.
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