McMinnville’s Dottie West Named Hall Of Famer

The country sunshine came out in McMinnville Tuesday afternoon as the announcement came from Nashville: Dottie West will be inducted in the Country Music Hall Of Fame.

West part of the 2018 class that includes Ricky Skaggs and fiddle player Johnny Gimble. The McMinnville-native becomes the 17th woman inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

McMinnville Mayor Jimmy Haley said the news left the city smiling Tuesday.

“She’s been slighted for all these years for whatever reason,” Haley said. “It’s such a happy moment for us.”

Warren County residents and many of West’s contemporaries have worked for several years to get West inducted into the Hall Of Fame. Petitions, displays at the hall, and live shows have all been part of the work to get West recognition.

“She was a trailblazer,” Haley said. “She was one of the first women in country music. She was an actress, she wrote songs, she was a musician.”

Haley said West has brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews who call Warren County home. He talked to them Tuesday and they were ecstatic.

West worked as a waitress at her mother’s restaurant, the Park Grill, on the square growing up.

“She grew up kind of poor,” Haley said. “Went to school here, performed at the Park Theater. She never forgot her hometown.”

West left McMinnville in 1951 when she received a scholarship to study at Tennessee Tech. In the 1960s, she became first female in country music to win a Grammy Award. Her 1965 hit “Here Comes My Baby Back Again” won the award and reached the top ten.

West wrote “Country Sunshine” as a jingle for Coca-Cola in the early 1970s. The song reached number two on the Billboard charts in 1973. In the late 1970s, West teamed with Kenny Rogers on a series of duets that resulted in her first number one song.

“Every Time Two Fools Collide”, “All I Ever Need Is You”, and “What Are We Doin’ in Love” also crossed over as pop hits.

Her 1980 song “A Lesson in Leavin'” became West’s first solo number one hit.

West died in 1991 in a car accident on the way to an Opry performance.