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A FATHER AND DAUGHTER SPENT YEARS MOVING BETWEEN SMALL LABELS WITHOUT A REAL HIT. THEN ONE CHEATING SONG TOOK THE KENDALLS TO NO. 1, A GRAMMY, AND THE CMA STAGE. Royce Kendall had already lived one version of a country career before his daughter joined him. Raised in Missouri with roots in the Arkansas Ozarks, he sang with his brother Floyce as the Austin Brothers, recorded in California, and appeared on regional country television. When the act ended, Royce returned to Missouri. By then, his teenage daughter Jeannie was developing a voice of her own. Royce supplied the lower harmony; Jeannie’s high voice floated above him. The contrast made them instantly recognizable—and often led listeners to assume they were husband and wife rather than father and daughter. They became the Kendalls. Their first album appeared on Stop Records in 1969. A cover of “Leaving on a Jet Plane” narrowly missed the country Top 50. They later signed with Dot and recorded country versions of pop songs, but none produced a real breakthrough. By 1977, the Kendalls had spent nearly a decade recording without a Top 40 country hit. Their next chance came from Ovation Records, a small independent label. A remake of Kitty Wells’s “Making Believe” reached only No. 80. Then they recorded Jerry Gillespie’s “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away.” The song followed two people moving toward an affair they knew was wrong. Jeannie sang the temptation with a bright, almost innocent tone, while Royce’s lower harmony gave the record a darker pull. The unusual pairing created its own tension: a cheating song delivered not by lovers, but by a father and daughter. Released in 1977, “Heaven’s Just a Sin Away” went to No. 1 on the country chart and crossed onto the Billboard Hot 100. It won the Grammy for Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group, then earned the CMA award for Single of the Year. The breakthrough lasted. “Sweet Desire” reached No. 1 in 1978, and “Thank God for the Radio” did the same in 1984. Over the next several years, the Kendalls placed twenty-two singles in the country Top 40. Royce and Jeannie continued touring until May 1998, when Royce suffered a fatal stroke while they were on the road in Iowa. For almost thirty years, Jeannie had entered each chorus knowing exactly where her father’s voice would meet hers. After he was gone, the records preserved that place for him.
For years, Royce Kendall and his daughter Jeannie lived the life familiar to countless aspiring country artists. They traveled from one recording label to another,...
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