Brenda Lee "never realised" just how poor she was growing up.

The 80-year-old singer was just eight years old when her father was killed in a construction accident which left her mother to raise three children in rural Georgia and while times were tough, neither she nor her siblings ever felt like they were living in poverty.

She told Southern Living: " [My mom] handled it all real well, and I think that she did that because of us. She had three children. We never knew that we were poor.

"And I always poor, poor, pooor. With three O's! Because back then, in the South, if you didn't have anything to eat or times were a little hard, you just went to your aunt's house, or your uncle's house. Or your friend down the street's house. So, we never realised that we were poor because everybody was in the same boat, so to say."

The Grammy Award-winning star - who is best known for her 1958 Christmas hit 'Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree' - recalled that her mother was a "great cook" and insisted that she and her siblings could always rely on a neighbour if she had to work to earn money for food.

She added: "My mom was a great cook, and we always had food. There was a wonderful black lady that lived at the end of our dirt road, and if we didn't have food. We knew we could always go to house. She had about 10 kids. If we were hungry, we went to her house so that mama could get up enough money to buy food.

"Everbody says 'Wasn't that awful, didn't you feel awful?' No! I thought it was fun. I didn't know we didn't have the money, I just knew that we were visiting someone we loved and we were eating. That's all. A kid doesn't know!"