The first single released from the album “Make the World Go Away” peaked at #73 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart. In February of 1977, she released her debut album “Here’s Charly McClain” which failed to make Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart. When she was 20 years old, Charly signed a recording contract with Epic Records in 1976 and released her debut single “Lay Down” which managed to peak at #67 on Hot Country Singles chart. By the age of 17, Charly was a regular on the club circuit and appeared at a show in Memphis called “Mid-South Jamboree” from 1973 to 1975. When she was 12 years old, she began her music career performing with her brother, Mike and his band, Charlotte & the Volunteers. She got her nickname “Charly” from the neighborhood friends she used to play with as a child.Īt the age of 8, Charly was inspired to start recording after her father Niles was hospitalized with tuberculosis and communicated with him through a tape recorder since she was unable to visit him in the hospital. While McClain retired from the music industry in the early nineties and has kept a low profile since, she remains important for both the classic hits she sang, and the words she was willing to say.Charly McClain (born Charlotte Denise McClain on Main Memphis, Tennessee) is a country music singer from the ’70s and ’80s. McClain’s willingness to speak out against this industry reality in 1982, when sexual harassment was still trying to gain traction as a serious nationwide issue, was courageous and quite a bit ahead of its time. Oermann in their book Finding Her Voice, “the producers and stars in Nashville expected sexual favors from me…I’ve had to slap big men her in Nashville in the face 98 percent of them will try to take advantage of you.” The pleasant sounds and soft appearance of McClain probably had many believing she was meek, but McClain was actually one of the first female artists to speak out against the sexual harassment that female artists received from unscrupulous men on Music Row.
She scored a few more hits along the way, charting her final singles in 1989, but she made an impact in another way that was longer lasting than most of those hits.
She uses the radio to escape from the hurting she’s feeling in real life. McClain scored her final #1 hit in 1985 with “Radio Heart”, a sweet story song about a lonely housewife who married too young and soon found herself a single mom. McClain soon found musical harmony with Mickey Gilley, and their #1 hit “Paradise Tonight” led them to make a full-fledged duet album, it Takes Believers. The pop-flavored song had such long-lasting appeal that staunch traditionalist Alan Jackson revived it in 1997, taking it back to the top five. “Who’s Cheatin’ Who” was her first #1 single, topping the charts in 1980. Over the next few years, she scored some major hits. In 1978, “Let Me Be Your Baby” became her breakthrough hit, followed by her first top ten single, “That’s What You Do to Me.” McClain finally released her debut album that same year. McClain released her first single, “Lay Down”, in the fall of 1976, but it was another two years before one of her songs caught on. And while in the early years, her gorgeous looks threatened to distract from her distinctive vocal talents, she stuck around long enough to prove she was more than just a pretty face, and she put her voice to use for more than just singing. Charly McClain was a mainstay on country radio for more than a decade, releasing thirteen studio albums for Epic. Sometimes, you can have a pretty long run of hits while still remaining under the radar.
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