show. Rose became noted for her colorful performances, once shocking a Grand Ole Opry audience by appearing with a bare midriff. She also recorded as a duo, Rosie and Retta, with her sister-in-law. Her first marriage was to E.B. Hale during the Second World War, when she was 16. She married club owner Jim Brogdon in the late 1950s; they separated after six years. After the Maddox Brothers group broke up in 1957, Rose initially performed with her brother Cal and then started a solo career. She had 14 hits on the Billboard country singles chart between 1959 and 1964, including several duets with Buck Owens, and also recorded with Bill Monroe. Her biggest hit, "Sing a Little Song of Heartache," reached no.3 on the country chart at the end of 1962. She then began to specialize in bluegrass recordings, recording the commercially successful and influential album Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass for Capitol Records. After her contract with the company ended in 1965, she began to concentrate on tours, performing with her brothers Cal and Henry and son Donnie – who died in 1982 – in the UK, Europe and elsewhere. She also performed regularly with bluegrass musician Vern Williams. She suffered several heart attacks from the late 1960s onwards, but continued to perform and record, for several labels. In 1996, she was nominated for a Grammy award for her Arhoolie bluegrass album, $35 and a Dream. Her final album was The Moon Is Rising, also in 1996. Maddox also acted in movies including The Hi-Lo Country (1998), and the documentaries The Women of Country (1993) and Woody Guthrie: Hard Travelin' (1984). In later years she lived in Ashland, Oregon, near where her brother Don Maddox had bought a ranch in 1958. She died in Ashland of kidney failure in 1998, at the age of 72. Legacy Emmylou Harris believes Maddox has never received the recognition she deserves, in part because of what Harris calls a reluctance in American society to celebrate the value of white country and roots music. Dolly Parton also credits Maddox as an early influence. Laura Cantrell's song "California Rose" was written in memory of Maddox. Her life story and that of the band were told in the biography, Ramblin' Rose: The Life and Career of Rose Maddox by Jonny Whiteside. The book won an award for excellence in 1998 from the Association for Recorded Sound