At the age of three, she was sexually abused by an uncle, an event she believed helped trigger her history of depression.Īt 17 she became pregnant by Charles Jordan, but he abandoned her, and in January 1964 she married Michael Ciminella. Naomi was born Diana Judd in Ashland, Kentucky, daughter of Charles Judd, a petrol station owner, and Pauline (nee Oliver), who was a cook on a Mississippi river boat. They won five Grammy awards, nine Country Music Association awards and seven awards from the Academy of Country Music. They had notched up 14 No 1 singles on the country chart, while their six albums had sold more than 20m copies, making them, at the time, history’s most successful country duo. In 1990 Naomi announced that she was suffering from hepatitis C, and the Judds gave up performing the following year (though they would reunite for some one-off shows, and mounted the Power to Change tour in 2000 and the Last Encore Tour in 2010-11). However, their joint career was cut painfully short. With songs that melded elements of bluegrass, folk, early rock’n’roll and even a little bebop, and lyrics that often empathised with the lives of small-town, working-class women, the Judds became a natural addition to country’s lineage of forceful female stars such as Tammy Wynette or Patsy Cline. Wynonna’s was powerful and bluesy, and mixed with Naomi’s sweeter tone to form an unmistakable and commercially irresistible blend. The Judds’ own voices made a naturally organic mix.
Naomi and Wynonna had listened to country music’s famous sibling acts, including the Delmore Brothers and the Everly Brothers as well as the swing-era trio the Boswell Sisters and the Andrews Sisters. But the Judds’ family bond gave them something special. The Judds were not alone either, because 1986 brought a swathe of debut albums by a posse of artists including Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett and Dwight Yoakam – “New Traditionalists” – who would galvanise a stagnant Nashville.
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