Six years after she married Jerry Reed Hubbard with almost nothing to her name, Priscilla Mitchell reached the top of the Billboard country chart before her husband ever scored a major hit of his own.
When 22 year old Jerry Reed Hubbard married 18 year old Priscilla Mitchell in Georgia on July 9, 1959, neither of them had steady work or a dollar to spare. Before their quiet Georgia wedding, both teenagers were already working inside the recording studios of Atlanta.
Born in Marietta, Georgia, Priscilla had made her radio debut at age four singing on local station WFOM. By her late teens, she was earning small paychecks as a studio backing vocalist at the National Recording Corporation of Bill Lowery in Atlanta, lending her voice to sessions that included the 1959 hit “Sea of Love” by Phil Phillips.
Jerry had grown up in Atlanta as the son of cotton mill workers, spending seven years of his childhood in foster homes and orphanages after his parents separated. Lowery signed him as a teenager to cut rockabilly and country records for Capitol, and rockabilly star Gene Vincent recorded one of the early compositions of Jerry. Still, studio sessions had not brought financial stability, and marrying Priscilla at 22 gave Jerry his first permanent home.
Soon after they exchanged vows, Jerry entered the U.S. Army for a two year stint that kept the couple apart until 1961, during which their first daughter Seidina was born in 1960. When his military service ended in 1961, the young family packed their few belongings, left Georgia behind, and moved to Nashville.
Their early years in Tennessee tested their resolve. Mainstream Nashville producers were accustomed to smooth and string heavy arrangements and did not immediately know how to market the percussive and syncopated fingerstyle guitar playing of Jerry. While Jerry worked as a songwriter and session guitarist and released early singles like “Goodnight Irene” and “Hully Gully Guitar” in 1962 for Columbia, Priscilla kept their household afloat through steady studio work.
She sang with the folk group the Appalachians on their 1963 single “Bony Moronie,” recorded pop singles under the stage name Sadina, a variation of the name of her daughter, and signed with producer Jerry Kennedy at Mercury Records. In 1965, Mercury paired her with Grand Ole Opry star and fellow Georgian Roy Drusky for a series of country duets.
Their first single together, “Yes, Mr. Peters,” spent two weeks at number one on the Billboard country chart in 1965. Priscilla and Drusky followed that success with charting country duets including “Slippin’ Around” in 1966 and “I’ll Never Tell on You” in 1967, releasing three collaborative albums, Love’s Eternal Triangle, Together Again, and We Belong Together.
Even as Priscilla topped the charts with Drusky, she and Jerry combined their talents in the studio. After Chet Atkins signed Jerry to RCA Victor in 1965 and encouraged him to lean into his raw guitar style, Jerry wrote and arranged records for his wife. In 1967, Priscilla reached the country charts with the solo single “He’s Not for Real,” written by Jerry. The following year, he played guitar on her charting Dolly Parton penned single “Your Old Handy Man” and wrote and arranged her uptempo release “Natch’illy Ain’t No Good.”
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the balance of their public careers shifted. Jerry broke through with songs like “Guitar Man,” “Tupelo Mississippi Flash,” “Amos Moses,” and the chart topping “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot,” while their second daughter Charlotte, known as Lottie, was born in 1970.
As the touring schedule of Jerry expanded and Hollywood roles in films like Smokey and the Bandit kept him on location, Priscilla stepped away from pursuing a solo career to raise Seidina and Lottie. Rather than leaving music entirely, she moved her voice onto the records and stages of her husband.
She sang backing vocals on his mid 1970s RCA albums, including Both Barrels from 1976, and joined his road band as a vocalist and keyboard player. Decades after their first Nashville sessions, she was still singing harmony on his 1995 Capitol album Flyin’ High and playing keyboards on his 2005 live album Jerry Reed, Live Still, while often sharing stages alongside Jerry and their two daughters.
Their marriage held for 49 years until Jerry died from complications of chronic emphysema on September 1, 2008, at age 71.
Priscilla spent the next six years looking after his musical catalog until she passed away in Nashville on September 24, 2014, six days after her 73rd birthday.
On that final 2005 live recording, the 18 year old bride from Georgia was still right behind him at the keyboards, keeping time for the boy she married in 1959.