We both started taking lessons, but I quit after just three of them. So Daddy stopped playing his violin except at Christmas time for the family, and you can imagine how that sounded! When I was eight we moved across town to our new house and my dad bought my sister Barbara and me a piano. Whenever he played a rotten note, the conductor would throw a walnut at him. Sometimes I've been described as having that Tammy Wynette teardrop in my voice.ĭP:Tell me something about your upbringing in Bartlesville, Oklahoma in the fifties and sixties, and your family, and how that influenced your music growing up and over your career.īH: My dad always loved music and had played violin in the Coffeyville, Kansas Junior Colleges orchestra. Has anyone ever said anything that best describes your singing?īH: Early reviews described me as sounding like I gargled with razor blades-that was a little harsh! Someone said I sang like a poor man's Brenda Lee-I love her, but I didn't understand the poor part.ha! In Africa, they said I sounded like a young Skeeter Davis, whom I loved dearly. The very nature of that beast urges me to write a big ballad, a shuffle with a walking bass, a Jerry Lee Lewis rocker, or the eclectic music on the soundtrack.ĭP: Your voice has that bit of gravel in it that makes it distinct. It has always been interesting, though, to write real country, 4/4 guitar-oriented songs, not on the guitar but on the piano. Looking back, I see my r&b-Aretha Franklin-influenced stage and my singer-songwriter-Carole King-influenced stage, as well as the out-and-out country stuff and the "Nanyehi" soundtrack, so I really don't have a good answer. I usually say I sing country, honky tonk, and rockabilly because that's what most people know me for, but as a writer, I write all kinds of songs, just whatever comes to me. I've always had a hard time describing to friends what kind of singer and writer you are, so how would you describe yourself to the uninitiated?īecky Hobbs: That's a good question. But as I learned, and as your "Best of" album and, even more dramatically, your new soundtrack shows, you write and sing a lot of different kinds of country music. Below is what I believe is the definitive interview of one of country music's true treasures.ĭanny Peary: When I first saw you in the mid-eighties, I thought you were a Honky Tonk-rockabilly singer.
Now my job is easier because of the release of "Best of the Beckaroo-Part One" and a brand new CD, "Nanyehi-Beloved Woman of the Cherokee," the marvelous soundtrack to a musical play that was written in tribute to her 5th-great grandmother, Nancy Ward. For almost thirty years, I have spread the word about Becky Hobbs. She always sang from the heart, her lyrics always spoke the truth, she never failed to get to me. But over the years I'd purchase all her CDs and be impressed by her wide range, as both a singer and songwriter. At the time I didn't know that, while always fun, she sang, wrote, and played a wide variety of music, including tender ballads like the classic "Angels Among Us," which Alabama turned into a country classic. I had no idea who she was, but I thought that this supercharged and very talented performer personified fun-and there aren't many better words to describe a country singer. Her pretty face was beaming, her wild blond hair was going every which way as her head bounced from side to side, and the audience was going crazy-appreciative of someone who gave it her all.īy the time she picked up her guitar to do her second toe-tapper I had my VCR ready. She was belting out an up-tempo song while pounding the keyboards Jerry Lee Lewis-style, exhibiting unbridled energy. My earliest recollection of country singer-songwriter Becky Hobbs is of her performing sometime in the mid-eighties on Nashville Now, the nightly Ralph Emery-hosted cornerstone show for the then thriving Nashville Network.
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