Born to a family so steeped in country music she was named after a member of the Carter family, Anita Cochran (birthdate February 6, 1967) joined her parents in the family band by the time she was five. She learned to play multiple instruments, but excelled at guitar, and picked up a wealth of gigging experience before leaving her native Michigan for Nashville. She wrote the majority of songs for her debut album, 1997’s Back to You. It went to 24 on the country chart, and the third single, “What If I Said?”, a duet with Steve Wariner, topped the country chart in America and Canada. Her sophomore album, 1999’s Anita, got a boost when Cochran co-starred in the TV movie The Dukes of Hazard in Hollywood, which also featured four different songs from the album. She scored a novel number 57 hit with 2004’s “(I Wanna Hear) A Cheatin’ Song, a duet with the deceased Conway Twitty that Cochran created by using unreleased vocals from several different unused Twitty vocal tracks. In 2017 Cochran was diagnosed with breast cancer and wrote the inspirational “Fight Like a Girl” about her experience. A video for the song won Best Music Video at the 2018 Creation International Film Festival.
