Lee was born Brenda Mae Tarpley in the charity ward of Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. She weighed 4 pounds 11 ounces at birth. She attended grade schools wherever her father found work, primarily in the corridor between Atlanta and Augusta. Her family was poor, living hand-to-mouth; she shared a bed with her two siblings in a series of three-room houses without running water. Life centered on her parents' finding work, their extended family, and the Baptist Church (where she sang solos every Sunday).[2]
Lee's father, Ruben Tarpley, was the son of a hardscrabble farmer in Georgia's red-clay belt. Although he stood only 5 ft 7 inches, he was an excellent left-handed pitcher and spent 11 years in the US Army playing baseball. Her mother, Annie Grayce Yarbrough, had a similar background of an uneducated working class family in Greene County, Georgia.
Lee was a musical prodigy. Although her family did not have indoor plumbing until after her father's death, they had a battery-powered table radio that fascinated Brenda as a baby. By the time she was two, she could whistle the tune of songs she heard on the radio.[3] Both her mother and sister remembered taking her repeatedly to a local candy store before she turned three; one of them would stand her on the counter and she would earn candy or coins for singing.
