NASHVILLE (AP) - When Rachel Bradshaw was a little girl, her father, hall of fame quarterback and part-time singer Terry Bradshaw, would pull out a guitar and employ the four chords he knew to sing Patsy Cline's "Crazy" with his daughter.
Two decades later, father joined daughter Wednesday night at a dinner to celebrate her signing a record deal with Bigger Picture Group. The younger Bradshaw came to Nashville from her hometown of Dallas to go to Belmont University, but had an ulterior motive.
"My parents wanted me to be in college but I came here to find out everything about music and about songwriting, who do I talk to, how do I talk to them?" Bradshaw said. "I spent a few years just meeting people and getting to know everybody I possibly could and I made friends and we'd start to write songs together."
One of those friends was Jerrod Niemann. Bradshaw co-wrote his hit, the somber heartbreaker "What Do You Want," sang backup on the song and played Niemann's former lover in the video. The 24-year-old country singer will soon begin recording her debut album with Keith Stegall, Bigger Picture's chairman and chief creative officer and a producer known for his work with Alan Jackson and Zac Brown Band.
Turns out she's not the only member of the family about to start work on new music.
Terry Bradshaw, who signed a deal with Mercury Records in the mid-1970s at the height of his career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, has released five albums with various labels and plans to begin work on a sixth soon.
"I'm doing a Christmas album with (producer) Jerry Crutchfield," Bradshaw said. "Matter of fact I was on the phone before I came down trying to set up time. So I'm doing a Christmas album, you know totally out of my own pocket book, but I've always wanted to do a Christmas album. Always. I started one in L.A., but it was horrible. Long story there ... ."