Faye Rowell was born in Lawton, Oklahoma in 1940 and is the fourth of nine children. Her father was a migrant worker which caused the family to move around frequently. The family eventually settled in Lubbock and as a migrant worker her father would pick cotton. As the oldest daughter, Rowell was responsible for all her younger siblings and helping her father pick cotton. Because Rowell had other responsibilities, she couldn’t go to school and only attended a few grade levels for a short amount of time. By the age of 15 she worked at and even ran a Steak n’ Shake restaurant in Lubbock.
Rowell discovered she had a talent for singing in the first grade. Rowell had a younger sister, Shirley, who was a “ring-tailed tooter” — a very energetic, mischievous child who helped Rowell’s talent be discovered. Rowell’s sister liked to walk around town with their cousin. One day they went up to The Great Plains of Life Building in downtown Lubbock and went to the radio station inside the building. Her sister approached Waylon Jennings — the disc jockey at the radio station at that time — and told him, “My sister can sing. You need to hear my sister sing.”
Through Shirley, Jennings arranged for Rowell to come to the station and sing for him. After hearing her voice, Jennings put Rowell in a band — The Midnight Ramblers. Rowell was practicing with the band, and they were getting ready to go on the Louisiana Hayride — a tour on which a lot of stars have been discovered. But Rowell backed out at the last minute after deciding it wasn’t the direction God wanted her to go.
