News Release: 3/27/2018 - Dottie West Inducted Into The Country Music Hall of Fame

Ricky Skaggs, Dottie West and Johnny Gimble achieved country music's greatest honor on Tuesday morning when they were announced as this year's inductees into the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

The emotional event, hosted by Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood, was held in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum's rotunda, where plaques commemorating the Hall's 133 previous inductees adorn the walls. 

West, known for hits like “Country Sunshine” and “A Lesson in Leavin’” is this year’s Veterans Era inductee. 

"One of first things I thought of when I found out (about West's forthcoming induction) three weeks ago was this day and the thousands of fans cheering and rejoicing this moment," said granddaughter Tess Frizzell. 

Dorothy Marie Marsh was born outside McMinnville, Tenn. on Oct. 11, 1932. As a young woman she sang and played guitar, and was offered a scholarship to attend Tennessee Technological University, where she studied music. 

In the early 1960s, she and then-husband Bill West moved to Nashville so that Dottie could pursue her country music career. Her home became a hub for songwriters like Roger Miller, and West began writing her own songs. One of her compositions, “Is This Me,” became a hit for Jim Reeves in 1963, and West was signed to RCA. Her first solo Top 10 single, “Here Comes My Baby,” was released in 1964; the song’s success earned her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry as well as the first Best Female Country Vocal Performance Grammy Award. 

“Dottie knocked down doors for all these women (in country music) today,” country artist Steve Wariner, who played in West’s band when he was just a teenager, told The Tennessean in 2016. “She had her own publishing company: First Generation Music. When I came to town, you never heard of anything like that. I remember her saying, ‘If a man can do it, I know damn well that I can do it.’ She was fearless in that way.”

In the early 1970s, West’s cheerful Coca-Cola jingle, “Country Sunshine,” became one of her biggest hits and eventually her signature song. Later that decade, she and Kenny Rogers, with whom she’d record hits like “Every Time Two Fools Collide,” took home Vocal Duo of the Year honors at two consecutive CMA Awards.

West released her final studio album, “Just Dottie,” in 1984. She died Sept. 4, 1991, several days after sustaining serious injuries in a car accident on her way to the Opry. This fall, she will be the first female artist posthumously inducted into the Hall since Tammy Wynette in 1998.