Most of the country artists on this list of stars who grew up poor were so poor that they didn’t even know it. Remarkably, the majority of these 19 singers reflect on their formative years with a smile, choosing to remember the love instead of the lack of food, running water or basic shelter.

Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes

Alan Jackson

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Alan Jackson

Alan Jackson’s father was a mechanic who converted an old tool shed into their family home and added on as they grew. At first, there wasn’t even running water at the Newnan, Ga. home, but Jackson would later say he never felt poor.

Tim McGraw

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Tim McGraw

There was an irony to Tim McGraw’s poor circumstances in Dehli, La. His family struggled while his birth father — Major League Baseball player Tug McGraw — played in the World Series.

“It was a little strange. I grew up in poor circumstances,” McGraw recalls. “I remember watching the World Series games and being 13 years old and sort of lucky that we could pay the light bill to have the TV on to watch the World Series games, so it was a little strange dichotomy.”

Shania Twain

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Shania Twain

Poverty, violence, divorce — Shania Twain’s childhood had it all. Her father worked in forestry, but there was often not enough money for rent and food for all five kids, so she’d go to school hungry.

“I would certainly never have humiliated myself enough to reach out and ask for help and say, ‘You know, I’m hungry. Can I have that apple that you’re not going to eat?'” she told Nightline in 2011 (per ABC). “I didn’t have the courage to do that.”

Things got worse before they got better. Her parents were killed in a car accident, and suddenly it was up to her to feed the family.

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Kane Brown

Racism, abuse and homelessness were all a part of Kane Brown’s childhood experience. Early in his career he spoke openly about living in a car and moving around between family homes. Country music brought him peace amid such turmoil.

Miranda Lambert

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Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert’s parents didn’t struggle her entire childhood, but there was a period of homelessness that reset her perspective. Her father’s private investigative business shuttered, so the family lost two houses, two cars and cash very quickly.

VH-1 did an episode of Behind the Music on Lambert in 2011, and these were among the central revelations. While Lambert didn’t write “The House That Built Me,” she has always said it reminded her of the house her mother built after this dark time.

Keith Urban

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Keith Urban

Keith Urban’s wife Nicole Kidman also grew up poor, and she’s actually the one that shared his details. Talking to Glamour UK, she revealed that Urban lived in a shed with no bedrooms. At one point, even that burned down.

Kenny Rogers

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Kenny Rogers

Kenny Rogers grew up in a federal housing project in Houston, Texas. “Before I was born, my dad didn’t take care of the family well,” he said in a Q&A that appeared at Medium in 2020. “My older brothers and sisters had to quit school to go to work, to help support the family. I think they had a lot of bitterness and anger.”

Jelly Roll

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Jelly Roll

Jelly Roll has not really gone into tremendous detail about how poor his family was growing up. He says he didn’t realize they lived in poverty, but once told GQ, “I don’t think I knew anybody with a real job.”

A life of dealing drugs was his reality, which in a very, very roundabout way got him to where he is today.

Gretchen Wilson

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Gretchen Wilson

Gretchen Wilson’s mother was only 16 when she gave birth and her father left two years later. The family grew up in a series of trailer parks, and the future star dropped out of school by the end of 8th grade. At age 14 she was slinging drinks at a local bar called Big O’s.

“I grew up in the lower class, but that never bothered me,” she told the Oklahoman in 2006. “I had a strong family. I had love. I had a roof over my head and something to eat every day. I was proud of my neighborhood and where I came from. And that’s why I have never, ever in my life tried to fit into any kind of mold I didn’t belong to. I’ve never wanted to be anything other than what I am.”

Darius Rucker

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Darius Rucker

In his book Life’s Too Short, Darius Rucker writes with great candor about growing up poor in South Carolina. His mother was the head of household, and the story goes that at one point she, her two sisters, grandmother and 14 kids all shared a three-bedroom house.

Wynonna Judd

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Wynonna Judd

Wynonna Judd has spoken often about her childhood, but in a book titled Coming Home to Myself, she writes eloquently about the tough times. Camp Wig was their spot along the Kentucky River. In the winter, they relied on a coal-and-wood stove, and pipes often froze, making water scare. The singer and sister Ashley Judd would sleep together, piled under blankets.

“A few of my friends used coffee cans for toilets,” she shares (per ABC News). “Some families lived up to eight in a three-room shack, curtains hung across the room to separate the kitchen from the sleeping areas. Many of the children had never been out of the county.”

Judd has long joked that she went from the outhouse to the White House.

Dolly Parton

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Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton’s family was so poor that when she was born, her parents paid the doctor with a sack of cornmeal. Born the fourth of 12 kids to a share cropper, there wasn’t much to go around, so clothes were often made from feed sacks.

That’d later pay off — “Coat of Many Colors” is based on a true story and has earned her millions in royalties. Her oft-told joke is that the family had running water, “if you ran and got it.”

Loretta Lynn

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Loretta Lynn

Like Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn grew up in poverty. Both women would speak of tough upbringings with love, though, with Lynn often saying that, “if you don’t know you’re poor you don’t feel poor.” Her father was a coal miner in poverty stricken Appalachia. That story provided a base for so many of her songs and is part of why she married and started a family so young.

Crystal Gayle

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Crystal Gayle

Crystal Gayle is Loretta Lynn’s sister, so what’s true for one is true for the other. As the youngest of eight kids, things were marginally better for Gayle. She was the only one born in a hospital, for example.

Alabama

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Alabama

Randy Owen and his Alabama bandmates grew up poor in Fort Payne, Ala., but it’s rare they’ve offered anecdotes detailing their struggles. Like quite a few artists on this list, they talk about how blessed they were to be surrounded by loving friends and family.

In 2009, Owen wrote a book called Born Country and afterward he shared he didn’t really realize how poor he was until then.

Willie Nelson

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Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson grew up picking cotton in Abbott, Texas during the Great Depression. To make things worse, his parents abandoned him.

Months after he was born his mother left the family, and his father more or less ignored them after remarrying. Thankfully, his grandparents took him in, and he recalls not having much, but a lot of love.

Glen Campbell

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Glen Campbell

Glen Campbell’s story is similar to others on this list of artists who grew up dirt poor. He was born 12th of 12 kids to a sharecropper in Delight, Ark. Musical talent was his ticket out of poverty, and he punched it by the time he was a teenager.

Johnny Cash

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Johnny Cash

Johnny Cash’s parents were cotton farmers in Arkansas, and by age five he was out in the field picking. Their five-room house was tight — in fact, all three Cash boys shared one bedroom. After graduating, Cash joined the Air Force as a way to escape poverty and life on the farm. Musical success came first.

Patsy Cline

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Patsy Cline

Patsy Cline grew up in Virginia during the Great Depression but adding to her difficulties was a father who couldn’t keep a job and eventually abandoned the family. Later she’d become dear friends with Loretta Lynn as the two had plenty in common. Lynn would write about their shared secrets in a book called Me & Patsy Kickin’ Up Dust.