Dorothy “Dottie” Marie Marsh West (October 11, 1932 – September 4, 1991) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Along with her friends and fellow recording artists Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, she is considered one of the genre’s most influential and groundbreaking female artists. West’s career started in the 1960s, with her top-10 hit, “Here Comes My Baby Back Again”, which won her a Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1965, the first woman in country music to receive a Grammy.
In the early 1970s, West wrote a popular commercial for the Coca-Cola company, titled “Country Sunshine”, which reached number two on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles in 1973. In the late 1970s, she teamed up with country pop superstar Kenny Rogers for a series of duets, which took her career to new highs, earning platinum-selling albums and number-one records for the first time.
Her duet recordings with Rogers, “Every Time Two Fools Collide”, “All I Ever Need Is You”, and “What Are We Doin’ in Love”, became country music standards. In the mid-1970s, her image and music underwent a metamorphosis, bringing her to the peak of her popularity as a solo act, and reaching number one on her own for the first time in 1980 with “A Lesson in Leavin'”.
In 2018, West was posthumously inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.