This childhood memory is from Dale Ann Bradley, one of bluegrass music’s most cherished voices.

One of my Christmas Memories is maybe my first. My parents and I had just returned from Michigan to resume living in Southeastern Kentucky. I must have been about 3.

My parents had gotten me a doll called “BABY SECRET.” You could pull a string and of course it had the recorded voice inside the doll. This was about 1967 and my dad thought it was the coolest gadget, and couldn’t wait to see how I would react.

In the weeks before Christmas, he would hide in the house and pull the string and the doll would talk. I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from and, of course, reacted in the way a 3 year old would, which was really amusing.

When I got the doll that Christmas, I drove everyone crazy pulling the string constantly until eventually she talked in a warble. It was talked about all through the years of how Dad couldn’t wait to give me the doll, and how he had me wondering where the voice was coming from.

We still laugh about it.