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Ava Barber (born June 28, 1954) is an American country music singer and performer. She is best remembered for having performed on The Lawrence Welk Show throughout much of the 1970s and early 1980s.
She is also known as a recording artist, her best-known hit being the song, "Bucket to the South", which peaked at #13 on the Hot Country Songs list in 1978. She has done many reunion specials on PBS for The Lawrence Welk Show over the past number of years.
Ava Barber was born and reared in Knoxville, Tennessee. She grew up singing in her oldest brother's rock & roll band. Barber soon began listening to country music from listening to her father turning on the radio to a country music station every morning. Soon, every Saturday night, Barber would got to the radio station's "WNOX" auditorium, where the music show was performed. When she was 10 years old, Barber began singing professionally. By the time she was 14 she joined a country music television show, located in Knoxville. She soon began performing around the Knoxville area, and even recorded records for some local labels. Her mother was an avid fan of the popular television show at the time, The Lawrence Welk Show, and suggested that her daughter should write to him, because he always helped out young acts. Barber wrote to Welk in 1973, and he responded suggesting that if she ever was on the West Coast, she should perform on the show. About this same time, she married singer and musician Roger Sullivan.
Soon her husband made the call to the Lawrence Welk offices. Welk was actually in the office that day and suggested that they should meet him at a golf tournament. They met on the golf course, and in a small tent off the golf course Barber auditioned for his show (singing "(I Never Promised You a) Rose Garden", a hit by another Welk show alum, Lynn Anderson), and she was soon on the show by February 1974.
Soon, Barber was hired as a regular on The Lawrence Welk Show, and found herself performing on his television series on the West Coast. At the same time, Barber was trying to get her country music career off the ground. Chart success didn't come initially, but she released her first charting single in 1977 with the song, "Waitin' At the End of Your Run", a truck-driving song. The song was only moderately successful, though, reaching only #70 on the country singles charts that year. Barber's 1978 release, "Bucket to the South", turned into a big country hit, peaking at #13 on the Hot Country Songs list in 1978, and reached #12 in Canada. Being a country singer brought her instant fame, and she soon appeared on many of its television shows, like Nashville Now, Crook & Chase, and made two appearances on the Grand Ole Opry as well.
Barber's success on the country charts lingered off after the success of "Bucket to the South". She never even had another Top 40 country hit. One song did come close though called "You're Gonna Love Love", which missed the Top 40, peaking at #44. She was soon off the country charts, until 1981, when she made a comeback with the single "I Think I Could Love You Better Than She Did". When The Lawrence Welk Show ended in 1982, Barber and her husband Roger returned to Knoxville, where they purchased their own bus and formed their own band, Sweet Apple. They toured the United States and Canada singing and performing.
In 1990, Barber and Sullivan went into business with Dick Dale and lease their own theater located in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. They operated the theater until 1996. From 1997-2000, Barber worked at the Welk Theatre in Branson, Missouri. Since 2000, she has toured with members of
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