When Jo Dee Messina’s son went to his homecoming dance recently, it brought back a memory for his mom.
“My son just went to homecoming. I told him that I never went to a prom or a homecoming or a dance or football game. And he’s like, ‘Really?’ I was like, ‘I was working every weekend.'”
She shared that last week on Taste of Country Nights, and the story behind it is all about her mother.
If the name rings a bell but you can’t place it, Jo Dee is the ’90s country star behind “Heads Carolina, Tails California,” her debut single from 1996. She went on to have six No. 1 country hits, including “Bye Bye,” “I’m Alright” and “Bring On the Rain,” her 2001 duet with fellow country star Tim McGraw. She was also the first woman in country to get three multi-week No. 1s from the same album.
But long before any of that, she was a kid from Massachusetts with a big voice.
Jo Dee was born in Framingham and grew up in nearby Holliston. As a teenager she sang with her brother and sister backing her on drums and guitar, and by 16 they were playing local clubs.
She started even younger than that. At 13 or 14, Jo Dee was singing on Tuesday and Thursday nights at a place about an hour and 10 minutes from home. Those were school nights, and the shows often ran late, because the crowd wanted to hear “the kid” sing.
“They always kept the kid… me, ’till the end because people would want to stay. They’re curious. They want to see the kids sing.”
Somebody had to get her there and back. That was her mom. She drove Jo Dee both ways, and then she had to be up at 5 AM for her own job.
So what happened the next morning, when a teenager had a school day ahead of her after getting home that late?
Her mom made a rule most parents would never dream of. She let Jo Dee sleep in.
“She had to get up at five every day, so she would let me sleep in, and if I made it to school, I did. And if I didn’t, I didn’t.”
That’s it. If Jo Dee made it to class, great. If she didn’t, that was fine too.
Jo Dee talked about those nights with a lot of love back in 2015, in an interview with CBS News. “She’d sit all night just to watch me sing one song,” she said then. And on those long drives home: “I’d fall asleep in the car, and we’d get home after midnight.” Watch the interview where she said it, because this is Jo Dee telling her mom’s story in her own voice.
Jo Dee Messina talks about her mom with CBS News
Her mom, Mary, passed away on April 19, 2020. Jo Dee wrote then, “She was my encouragement and she believed in me at times when no one else did.”
She added, “She loved me perfectly in a way that only she could do.”
This year’s CMA Awards on Nov 18 will celebrate the music of the ’90s, the decade Jo Dee’s career took off. She got there riding in her mom’s car, often asleep on the way home from another late show.