Sometimes people ask me for advice. \u201cReba, which song should I record?\u201d \u201cHow do I get started in the music business?\u201d \u201cDo you think my teenager is ever going to lose that attitude?\u201d (The answer to that last one, by the way, is yes, so hang in there.) If I could summarize my best advice in one word it would be: Listen.<\/p>\n
My grandma, my mama\u2019s mother, Reba Estelle Brassfield, taught me a lot about listening. I\u2019m her namesake and I adored her. I remember her braiding her long hair every night before she went to bed.<\/p>\n
After supper, we\u2019d sit on the porch looking at the sunset and Grandma would take a gallon jar filled with fresh milk heavy with cream and churn it into butter. Next morning we\u2019d slather it on her home-baked biscuits or let it melt on her blackberry cobbler.<\/p>\n
Grandma would take us kids fishing at a pond behind her house. We\u2019d drop our lines in the water and listen as she told Bible stories, waiting for the fish to bite. That\u2019s where I learned about Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the whale, Joseph and his coat of many colors. And the songs she sang to me, like \u201cJesus Loves Me.\u201d<\/p>\n
But mostly she showed me how to talk to Jesus. You just said whatever was on your heart. I used to watch her get on her knees in her nightgown by her bed, braids trailing down her back. Afterward I asked her what she was doing. \u201cTalking to Jesus. The Holy Spirit is talking to Jesus for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow do you know what he\u2019s saying, Grandma?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI listen real hard. I listen to what God wants me to do. That\u2019s the most important part of praying.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listening is a part of singing too, something I first discovered in church. I still have the little brown hymnbook I used as a child. Alice, Susie and I would go with Grandma and Grandpa Smith to worship at a one-room country church near our ranch in Chockie, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
There was a piano in the church, but most of the time, we didn\u2019t have a piano player. Thank goodness Stella McGee could read music. Mrs. McGee would study the hymnal, call for silence, hum the pitch to the congregation and then we\u2019d sing a cappella.<\/p>\n
We had to hear the right note for everyone to start together and we had to keep listening to sing the song through together. Just like Grandma\u2019s prayers, singing involved listening as much as anything else, and all great musicians have great ears.<\/p>\n
First grade was the beginning of my performing career. I sang \u201cAway in a Manger\u201d for our school Christmas program, the first time I sang behind a microphone. I loved hearing my voice soaring in the gym. I felt bigger than I was, bolder.<\/p>\n
I was the third of four kids so it wasn\u2019t easy to get noticed. But when I sang, people paid attention. People listened.<\/p>\n
I kept at it, getting one solo after another, \u201cMy Favorite Things\u201d one year, \u201cRed Wing\u201d the next. At the 4-H talent show when I was in fifth grade I borrowed my teacher Mrs. Mackey\u2019s daughter\u2019s prom dress along with a rhinestone necklace and bracelet and sang \u201cMy Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown.\u201d<\/p>\n
I won the Junior Individual Act division, my first trophy ever. Still, I didn\u2019t think my voice was anything special. Singing came so natural, I guess that\u2019s why I thought I was meant to succeed at something else, something that didn\u2019t come so natural. That turned out to be another lesson in listening.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I wanted to be a world champion barrel racer, a rodeo champion like my daddy. I grew up riding horses, all of us kids did. When we were five or six Daddy said, \u201cGet on that horse, get in the brush and find some cattle.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a ranch, everyone has to pitch in. It\u2019d be 4:00 A.M. when Daddy would get us up and we\u2019d go catch and saddle the horses in a 40-acre pasture while he cooked breakfast. He\u2019d fry bacon, then fry eggs in the grease. The eggs would float in bacon fat and slide off the platter.<\/p>\n
We\u2019d fill our bellies then get on our horses and chase cattle all day in brush so thick sometimes you couldn\u2019t ride through it. Many times I had to get off my horse and pull his legs out of the briars.<\/p>\n
One day while we were working cattle down at the corrals, I got real mad when they wouldn\u2019t go into the chute. I reared back, cussing, and threw the hot shot\u2014 the cattle prod\u2014at the fence. It busted into pieces and hit me in the forehead.<\/p>\n
Mama and Daddy didn\u2019t say a word about my cussing. I guess they thought getting my head cut was punishment enough.<\/p>\n
I worked hard at being a barrel racer. You run the horse as fast as he can go, then stop him as fast as you can, turn around a barrel, accelerate and do the same thing with two more barrels, making a cloverleaf pattern. I started training at nine and by the time I was 11 I was competing, all 75 pounds of me on 1,500 pounds of horseflesh.<\/p>\n
\u201cReba,\u201d Daddy said, \u201cyou need to kick your horse more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDaddy,\u201d I said, \u201cI\u2019m kicking as hard as I can! My stirrups are sticking out like this.\u201d I held up my hands as far apart as I could. Daddy just shook his head.<\/p>\n
I loved the practice pen, or the roping pen as we called it. I practiced and practiced, entered one rodeo after another. I did okay, sometimes pretty good, but I got nervous and I\u2019m sure the horse knew it!<\/p>\n
Turns out, I was allergic to everything in the barn\u2014the dust, the hay, the mold, the mildew. I\u2019d start sneezing. My eyes itched and my throat got so constricted I wouldn\u2019t have been able to sing if I tried. After one miserable showing, Daddy said, \u201cWhy do you want to do something you\u2019re not that good at?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what am I good at?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSinging. That\u2019s your gift,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to say the rest was history, but sometimes the people you\u2019re least likely to hear are your family, and I could be just as stubborn as Daddy. Finally I started focusing more on my music.<\/p>\n
It started in junior high when Mama and my Oklahoma history\/art teacher talked our superintendent Mr. Toaz into forming a country-western band at the school. We didn\u2019t have a marching band or a choir. So that band was our country music 101 class.<\/p>\n
Out of that class, my brother, Pake, my sister Susie and I formed a trio called the Singing McEntires, and performed at every place we could. In college, I got my first big break. Guess where? At a rodeo! I sang the national anthem at the 1974 National Finals Rodeo in Oklahoma City in front of 9,000 people each night for 10 performances.<\/p>\n
Something happened there that was another good lesson in listening. \u201cI sing the national anthem in the key of D,\u201d I told the conductor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe play it in the key of A,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My gut told me that would never do. The key of A would be awful for me. I should have listened to my instincts. But I didn\u2019t feel like I could argue with the conductor. We tried it at the rehearsal and, yes, I sounded awful.<\/p>\n
Fortunately Clem McSpadden, the man who got me the job and one of the main men there at the NFR, spoke to the conductor. The next run-through we did it in D. But it was almost a disaster.<\/p>\n
All this training in listening turned out to be invaluable in my career. Time and again I\u2019d sit in the tour bus or on a plane, asking what was right for me. I\u2019d try to listen. Sometimes I\u2019d forget.<\/p>\n
Once I auditioned for a part in a movie I really <\/em>wanted. It seemed meant for me. I was sure I had it in the bag, then I found out that they\u2019d cast another actress. I was crushed. Why didn\u2019t I get the part? Why did they give it to someone else? If there had been a cattle prod handy I would have chucked it at the wall (probably with the same results too).<\/p>\n Finally I did what Grandma had taught me. I got myself quiet and listened for the answer. Listened real hard.<\/p>\n You didn\u2019t get that part because you\u2019re needed at home with the kids, <\/em>came the message. My husband, Narvel, and I had his three kids, Shawna, Brandon and Chassidy, with us a lot, plus we had our own son, Shelby.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks for the answer, Lord,\u201d I said. It was just what I needed to hear, and it made all the difference. I was more than glad to be there with my family.<\/p>\n By now Narvel, our kids and people who work with me know I don\u2019t do a thing without praying first. \u201cWhat are you doing next?\u201d someone might ask.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d I\u2019ll say. \u201cGod hasn\u2019t told me yet.\u201d I honestly believe that.<\/p>\n Not long ago Shelby, age 22, announced he wanted to become a racecar driver. All I could think was what a dangerous occupation that was. I didn\u2019t know anything about the racing business. Was it even more dangerous than rodeoing?<\/p>\n I could picture myself wearing a path in the dirt pacing, worrying, waiting to see that he\u2019d finished a race safely.<\/p>\n I prayed hard. I finally realized God gave Shelby that passion and talent to race cars, so I had to trust God to take care of Shelby on the track, just like I trust him every minute of the day. \u201cShelby,\u201d I finally told him, \u201cI\u2019m behind you a hundred percent.\u201d<\/p>\n Shelby is racing now and he\u2019s good at it. I\u2019m talking to God more now too.<\/p>\n Sometimes when I close my eyes I can smell Grandma\u2019s hot biscuits with butter fresh from the churn. It feels like she\u2019s right there praying with me, her long gray braids running down her back, both of us opening our hearts and listening to what God has to say. Listening real hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes people ask me for advice. \u201cReba, which song should I record?\u201d \u201cHow do I get started in the music business?\u201d \u201cDo you think my teenager is ever going to lose that attitude?\u201d (The answer to that last one, by the way, is yes, so hang in there.) If I could summarize my best advice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[51,70,61,72],"ppma_author":[1330],"class_list":["post-20133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","tag-inspirational-stories","tag-mother","tag-norman-vincent-peale","tag-stories-of-faith"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n