VIENNA — Country musician, songwriter and Vienna native Leona Williams added another accolade to her illustrious career last month with a lifetime achievement award from mid-Missouri non-profit corporation Genuine Country Music Association (GMCA).

Williams, 81, began her career in the late 1950s. Over the decades, she has released more than a dozen albums including solo records and collaborations with industry icons such as Merle Haggard and George Jones. She also made appearances on dozens of other albums and compilations.

“I have done so much in the music business,” she said. “I’ve recorded and been successful with my records. I’ve sung on a lot of different people’s records. I got this lifetime achievement award for all that.”

GMCA, founded in 2009 by several traditional country music performers in the Ozarks, has a mission “to operate for charitable, education, literary and benevolent purposes, dedicated to the preservation and perpetuating the past and understanding of country music, its performers and groups and other persons associated with the country music industry,” according to its website. The organization holds and promotes traditional country music festivals to support the art and raise money for charitable causes, such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Wounded Warrior Project, Relay for Life and more.

Each year, GMCA hosts a Classic Country Jamboree performance in Lake Ozark where it honors some of the performers. This year, Williams received the “Entertainer of the Decades” lifetime achievement award.

“I was very, very proud of it,” she said. “We’ve done that show up there about every year for the past four or five years. John and Lynn Farrell work really hard to get all that together.”

Williams said the award is not the first lifetime achievement award she has received for her decades in entertainment, but she remains grateful for each one, including what she considers one of her highest honors: having the stretch of Highway 63 through Vienna named for her.

“I’m very thankful that I’m getting some attention,” she said. “I’m still out there working at my age.”

Nearly every weekend takes Williams out on the road for a performance. Recent trips have taken her to Minnesota, Mississippi and Virginia. Once a month, she performs as part of Stevie Lee Woods and the Nashville Roadhouse Live Band’s show at the Pierce Arrow Theater in Branson. During the shows, she performs with her son Ron Williams and fellow longtime country artist Mary Lou Turner. She said performing with her son is “wonderful.”

“He does his own show, and then I do mine, and then we do some duets together,” she said. “He’s one of the best singers I’ve ever heard. While we’re driving down the road, we can write a song, or we can sing a new song and learn our harmony parts just riding down the road.”

Williams shared some of the highlights of her career while reflecting on the award.

Her journey in the industry began casually; she played in a band while attending beauty college. Through the band, Williams met rising country star Loretta Lynn.

“We booked her some fairs,” Williams recalled. “We even booked Vienna at the Maries County Fair, and our band backed her. She was so sweet and kind, and she said ‘If I ever make it, I’m going to help you kids.’”

One day, Williams received a call from Lynn requesting that she move to Nashville, Tennessee, to tour with her in the backing band Blue Kentuckians. Williams toured with Lynn for about a year before earning her own record deal. Her career took another turn when she received an offer to perform for American troops stationed in Vietnam.

“My kids’ dad and I went, and we were gone for nine weeks in the Far East entertaining servicemen during the Vietnam War,” she said. “The first time I saw one of my records, it came out while we had left to go on tour, so they sent me a copy of my 45 record overseas to us, and it caught up with us in Taipei, Taiwan. We went to the USO club and put it on the jukebox.”

Williams also recalled some of her works that have remained her favorites through the years.

“The one that probably got me more attention than anything I’ve ever recorded by myself was called ‘Yes Ma’am, He Found Me in a Honky Tonk,’” she said. “That’s back when you could hear real country music on the radio, and a lot of them were honky tonk songs. I still sing it at every one of my shows and get a lot of requests for it.

“Then I met this guy named Merle (Haggard),” she continued. “He and I had a Top 10 record that we’d written called ‘The Bull and the Beaver.’ It was back in the day when CB radios were out, and I told Merle I’d like to have one of those, so we wrote this song. It was fun and crazy.”

Williams said the biggest thrill of her life was when she got to record a duet with George Jones.

“He was my favorite singer through all the years,” she said. “I always loved George. He and his wife Nancy were some of my best friends.”

Although Williams sold her house in Vienna, she comes back often to visit family. She remembered how growing up here, her family of 12 children helped her get started playing music.

“My dad played the fiddle, and my mom, she could play clawhammer-style banjo, and she could also play the piano,” she said. “I feel like I had the best family ever. We didn’t have a lot to brag about, but we always had something good to eat. We always had a lot of music and a lot of fun.”