This week in Texas music history: Charline Arthur is born in Henrietta

On Sept. 2, 1929, Charline Arthur was born in a railroad boxcar in Henrietta, Texas. She was raised in a musical family. Her father was a harmonica player and Pentecostal preacher, and her mother played piano and guitar.

Charline made her first guitar out of a cigar box when she was 5. She became a skilled vocalist and played multiple instruments, performing with her sister at rodeos, churches and barn dances. By 15, she performed regularly on KPLT in Paris, Texas.

However, her records were only moderately successful, and her relationship with RCA grew turbulent. In addition to her reputation as a strong-willed, assertive woman in an industry that checked the ambitions of such artists, Arthur was known for her racy lyrical innuendos, which didn’t go over well in the 1950s.

When her RCA contract expired in 1956, it was not renewed. While she continued to perform and record for small labels, her career never fully recovered.

Arthur died in 1987 living in a trailer park in Idaho, but her star lived on in the way that her performances influenced icons like Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley. Her story, too, is a valuable lesson on the challenges faced by women in country music in midcentury Texas.