In 1964, Connie Smith released her debut single "Once a Day" and watched it climb all the way to number one, where it stayed for eight weeks. No woman in country music had held the top spot that long before, and none would again until Taylor Swift came along nearly 50 years later.
Just a year before that record-breaking run, Smith was a 22-year-old homemaker. In August 1963, she entered a talent contest at Frontier Ranch, a country music park outside Columbus, Ohio, singing Jean Shepard's "I Thought of You."
She won first place and five silver dollars, but the real prize was impressing one of the judges, Grand Ole Opry member Bill Anderson.
"This little girl, with a guitar bigger than she was, came out on stage and just blew me away with her voice," Anderson told American Songwriter in 2018. "She won the contest and I went backstage and told her if she ever wanted to come to Nashville I'd like to help her. I thought she was terrific."
Still, Smith wasn't about to quit everything and pursue music full time. But six months later, she called Anderson and told him she'd reconsidered.
He helped her sign with RCA Records, where producer Chet Atkins had another job for Anderson.
"Chet Atkins told me, 'We have a lot of good singers but we don't have a lot of good songs. I'm counting on you to write her some good songs,'" Anderson recalled. "We started with 'Once a Day' and went from there."
Anderson wrote her a song about a woman who can't quite let go of an old love, but has at least gotten her crying down to just "once a day."
Smith released the song in August 1964, and it climbed the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart before hitting number one the week of November 28. It stayed there until January 23, 1965, when Sonny James' "You're the Only World I Know" finally knocked it off.
With that hit, Smith became the first woman in country music to send a debut single to number one. Nobody else matched it for nearly 30 years, until Trisha Yearwood did it in 1991 with "She's in Love with the Boy."
The song earned Smith Grammy nominations for Best Country and Western Single and Best Country and Western Vocal Performance, Female.
She never topped the charts again, but her career kept rolling. Over the next several years, she racked up 19 more top 10 hits.
Related: Congratulations Pouring in for Country Star Bill Anderson's Opry Milestone
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