Last year, Blake Shelton’s mother, Dorothy Shackleford, informed an interviewer that she herself had been an aspiring songwriter from the earliest days of her son’s career, and Star sources claim that her life — filled with broken marriages, boozin’, brawlin’ and cheatin’ — is the traditional stuff that would make a million-selling country music album!
“I’ve known Dorothy all my life,” Tim Clark, a family friend, tells Star exclusively. “She loves to party and has tons of personality, just like Blake. If you knew both of them, it would be easy to se how much he takes after her — though Dorothy could be a lot wilder than I think Blake has ever been!”
Having wed Miranda Lambert in 2011 — after he cheated on his first wife — Blake is only halfway to his mother’s current total of four marriages. Dorothy wed her first husband, Ronnie Musgrove, at the age of 18, and according to his mother, he was “crushed” when he discovered Dorothy had begun an affair with Dick Shelton, Blake’s future father. She married him in 1968.
“But she end up going back and having an affair with my son, Ronnie!” Pauline Musgrove claims. After her divorce from Dick in 1985, Dorothy married twice more.
After Blake’s brother, Richie, was killed in a 1990 car crash at the age of 24, Tim says Dorothy understandably went through a rough patch. “She went on a wild streak, partying a lot, going skydiving, doing a bunch of crazy things,” A rep for the retired salon owner has denied the claims in Star’s story, but Tim alleges that one time, “she got arrested on a DUI. My uncle had to go bail her out because she was too embarrassed to call any of her family members.”
Years later, when her son became famous, it was a dream come true for Dorothy. Blake has even laughingly told the story of the “worst experience” of his life — his mom’s insistence on entering him into beauty pageants when he was a child. “Dorothy would do anything she could to help make Blake famous,” Tim reveals. “Achieving stardom may have been Blake’s biggest dream, but I’m pretty sure it was as much Dorothy’s as well.”
For more on Blake’s dark past, pick up the latest issue of Star, on newsstands now!
