LANCASTER, Texas -- With roots deep in the Indiana farm belt, weaned on Sunday School, hymns and rural living, it's small wonder Janie Fricke is right at home in her 120-year-old farm house in Lancaster, population 16,000.
The casual, cheery singer is a self-described homebody who sidesteps the malls and posh boutiques of nearby Dallas to shop on the main street square.
Her talent has generated 18 hit singles off nine albums, her own line of designer clothing and a two-hour television special.
Janie Fricke is determined to keep it that way.
'I'm basically a homebody and never really dreamed of trying to be what you would call a star,' said the singer, 35, shortly after winning her second consecutive Country Music Association 'Female Vocalist of the Year' award.
'It's hard work,' she said of a show schedule that sends her on the road as many as 250 days a year.
'But it's worth it for the success, satisfaction and rewards it can bring -- long as you can keep it in perspective and stay a normal person.'
She was called 'Nashville's reluctant star' in 1977 because she refused to accept an offer from Columbia records as a solo artist unless they allowed her to continue a career in jingle singing and back-up vocal assignments.
Her name may have been unknown to the public at the time, but her voice was one of the most familiar in the industry.
She sang on such national commercials as RC Cola, 7-Up, Orange Crush, Coors beer, Pizza Hut, Red Lobster and United Airlines and did back-up vocals on more than 5,000 recordings with artists like Elvis Presley, Loretta Lynn, Eddie Rabbitt, Ronnie Milsap, Crystal Gayle, Tanya Tucker, Charlie Pride, Moe Bandy and Mel Tillis.
'My voice was adaptable to about anything they might need from rhythm-and-blues to middle-of-the-road and country,' she said. 'They would call for a singer who sounded like Aretha Franklin, Karen Carpenter, Lynn Anderson or whoever and I would go and do it.
'I was secure in what I was doing at the time, but it wasn't always that way,' she said.
She grew up on a 400-acre farm in South Whitley, Ind., where her mother taught piano and played the organ.
'I was about 13 when I learned to play the guitar and had been singing in our little country church long before that.'
As an education major at Indiana University, she began singing folk ballads and appearing at off-campus coffee houses.
She dropped out of school after her sophomore year to sing radio call letters in Memphis, Tenn. A year later she returned to IU, earned her degree and resumed her singing career.
When she reached Los Angeles in 1974, 'There just wasn't any work, at least not for me. I spent most of my time knocking on doors that stayed closed and waiting by a telephone that didn't ring. It got to the point I was substitute teaching on a day-to-day basis in the inner schools.'
She then moved to Nashville and a year later began doing back-up for everybody with the Lea Jane Singers.
'One day we were with Johnny Duncan and some of the songs called for a girl doing a line or two of solo on the background. Larry Gatlin was the producer and they asked if I would do the part.'
The Texans and Columbia's executives were enchanted.
Songs like 'Jo and the Cowboy' and 'Stranger' that were hits for Duncan pushed his co-singer onto center stage.
She unreeled a series of top 20 hits -- including 'Please Help Me (I'm Falling),' 'Baby It's You,' 'I'll Love Your Troubles Away' and 'Playin' Hard to Get' -- to land New Female Vocalist of the year honors from Billboard, Cashbox and the Music City News trade slicks.
As the hits continued, the back-up vocalist traded her blue jeans and T-shirts for the glitter and glamour of beaded-leather, snakeskin boots and a whirlwind run of television appearances and road shows.
She has also managed to keep in touch with home because, she said, 'I think you can do both if you really work at it.'
She and husband-manager Randy Jackson share a yellow farmhouse called Texana, where the demands of stardom are sandwiched between running into town for wallpaper, selecting window shades, supervising carpenters, quilting and trunk showings her western clothing collection.
She's also active in the community, speaking to students at a nearby college. She was grand marshal of the town's 1983 Christmas parade and bought more than 500 gifts from local merchants to give people at the area's retirement and children's centers.
'That all part of being at home,' she said.
