eana Carter was born Jan. 4, 1966, in Nashville, Tenn. She is the daughter of Fred Carter Jr., a guitarist who in the mid-’60s and ’70s played on close to 90 percent of all Nashville sessions with artists such as Elvis Presley, Simon & Garfunkel and Roy Orbison. Deana Carter’s first big break came when one of her demo tapes caught the attention of Willie Nelson, who invited her to take part in the 1994 Farm Aid VII concert as the show’s only female soloist. That same tape led to a record deal with Capitol Records that year.
Capitol released Did I Shave My Legs for This? in 1996. «Strawberry Wine,» the first single, balanced nostalgia with the loss of innocence. It shot to No. 1 and won the CMA single of the year in 1997. Two more singles from the album topped the charts, and the album sold 5 million copies.
She contributed to the commercially and critically successful Hope Floats soundtrack and to the animated film Anastasia, a project which yielded a Grammy nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for the song she performed, «Once Upon a December.»
Caught in a shake-up at Capitol, her follow-up album Everything’s Gonna Be Alright underperformed and she escaped the label a few years later. After a Christmas album, a divorce and a move to Los Angeles, Carter resurfaced with the album I’m Just a Girl on Arista Nashville in 2003.
