Cristy Lane

Cristy Lane was born Eleanor Johnston on January 8, 1940, in Peoria, Illinois. She married Lee Stoller in 1959, and the couple had three children. In 1969, Lane performed over one hundred shows for American soldiers in Vietnam. She moved to the Nashville, Tennessee area in the early 1970s to pursue a country music career, and her husband founded the independent label LS Records to release her music.

During the 1970s, Lane placed several songs on the country charts, including “Let Me Down Easy” (1977), “Tryin’ to Forget About You” (1977), “Shake Me, I Rattle” (1977), “Simple Little Words” (1979), and “I Just Can’t Stay Married to You.” In 1979, she was named Top New Female Vocalist by the Academy of Country Music. The following year, her single “One Day at a Time” reached number one on the Billboard country chart, marking the biggest hit of her career.

The success of “One Day at a Time,” a song with clear Christian themes, signaled a turn toward inspirational music for Lane. She released the gospel-tinged single “Footprints in the Sand” in 1983 and published her autobiography, titled One Day at a Time, in the 1980s. In the early 1990s, Lane and her husband opened the Cristy Lane Theatre in Branson, Missouri, where she performed regularly. Her catalog also includes the 1979 album Simple Little Words.