Connie Smith & Nat Stuckey

Thanks to her powerful voice and the lonely desperation she so effortlessly manages to express, Connie Smith is considered one of the most influential vocalists in country music history. She moved from being a small-town Ohio housewife to country stardom thanks to her 1964 hit single "Once a Day," which topped the country chart for eight consecutive weeks and earned a Grammy nomination. While her commercial peak in the late-'60s yielded a string of Top Ten singles, she remained popular into the '70s. Smith more or less retired at the end of that decade, but in 1998 she made a ...