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WWVA Jamboree
The ''Wheeling Jamboree'' is the second oldest country music radio broadcast in the United States after the ''Grand Ole Opry''. The Jamboree originated in 1933 in Wheeling, West Virginia on WWVA (AM), WWVA, the first radio station in West Virginia and a 50,000-watt clear-channel station AM station until about 2007.Tribe, p. 43. Numerous acts and stars performed on the ''Jamboree'', some of whom would later go on to mainstream commercial success. In 1946, the show (then performing at the Virginia Theatre demolished in 1962) was syndicated on the CBS radio network as "CBS Radio Saturday Night Country Style", becoming the first national radio broadcast from West Virginia. In 1997, WWVA dropped its country music format, although Saturday night broadcasts continued, from various theaters and managed by various entities, the final commercial one being Live Nation, initially a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, which had come to own WWVA. By 2006, Clear Channel had restructur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doc Williams (singer)
Doc Williams (June 26, 1914 – January 31, 2011) was an influential American country music band leader and vocalist. Born as Andrew John Smik, Jr. in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and raised in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, he got his professional start playing with the Kansas Clodhoppers during the early 1930s. Doc eventually formed his own band, Doc Williams and the Border Riders. The group went on the air on WWVA Wheeling in 1937; soon, with the addition of comedian Froggie Cortez and cowboy crooner "Big Slim the Lone Cowboy", and became one of the station's most popular attractions. He was associated with the radio station for over 40 years. In 1939, Williams married Jessie Wanda Crupe, a singer who soon adopted the stage name Chickie Williams (February 13, 1919 – November 18, 2007). The Williams' were popular performers. Although the couple and their band the Border Riders recorded, performed live and appeared on the radio for over five decades, they never had ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sun Records
Sun Records is an American independent record label founded by producer Sam Phillips in Memphis, Tennessee in February 1952. Sun was the first label to record Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash. Prior to that, Sun had concentrated mainly on African-American musicians because Phillips loved rhythm and blues and wanted to bring it to a white audience. On January 28, 2021, Sun Records was acquired by Primary Wave for $30 million. History Sam Phillips opened his Memphis Recording Service studio on January 3, 1950 at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis. It was founded with the financial aid of Jim Bulliet, one of many record executives for whom Phillips had scouted artists before 1952. In March 1951, Phillips produced "Rocket 88" by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, who were actually Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm. Because of Turner's Delta blues connections, he was contracted by Phillips as a talent scout and he was effectivel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Morgan (singer)
George Thomas Morgan (June 28, 1924 – July 7, 1975) was a mid-20th-century American country music singer. He is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and a former member of the Grand Ole Opry. He is best known for his 1949 hit single " Candy Kisses". He is the father of singer Lorrie Morgan, who is also a country music star. Biography Morgan was born to Zachariah "Zach" Morgan and Ethel Turner in Waverly, Tennessee, United States, but was raised in Barberton, Ohio. He was, along with a few other contemporaries (most notably Eddy Arnold and Jim Reeves), referred to as a " country crooner;" his singing style being more similar to that of Bing Crosby or Perry Como than that of Ernest Tubb or Lefty Frizzell. Morgan was a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1948, and is best remembered for the Columbia Records song " Candy Kisses", which was a No. 1 hit on the '' Billboard'' country music chart for three weeks in 1949. He also had several hits based on a "rose" theme: " Roo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Curtis
Ken Curtis (born Curtis Wain Gates; July 2, 1916 – April 28, 1991) was an American singer and actor best known for his role as Festus Haggen on the CBS western television series ''Gunsmoke''. Although he appeared on ''Gunsmoke'' earlier in other roles (such as “Brisco” in S4E32’s “Change Of Heart), he was first cast as Festus in season 8 episode 13, December 8, 1962 "Us Haggens." His next appearance was Season 9, episode 2, October 5, 1963 as Kyle Kelly, in "Lover Boy." Curtis joined the cast of ''Gunsmoke'' permanently as Festus in "Prairie Wolfer," season 9 episode 16, January 18, 1964; though this fact is often confused with a 1969 episode of the same name ("Prairie Wolfer") made five years later (S13E10). Early years Born the youngest of three boys in Lamar in Prowers County in southeastern Colorado, Curtis lived his first ten years on a ranch on Muddy Creek in eastern Bent County. In 1926, the family moved to Las Animas, the county seat of Bent County, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hank Snow
Clarence Eugene "Hank" Snow (May 9, 1914 – December 20, 1999) was a Canadian-American country music artist. Most popular in the 1950s, he had a career that spanned more than 50 years, he recorded 140 albums and charted more than 85 singles on the ''Billboard'' country charts from 1950 until 1980. His number-one hits include the self-penned songs " I'm Moving On", " The Golden Rocket" and "The Rhumba Boogie" and famous versions of "I Don't Hurt Anymore", "Let Me Go, Lover!", "I've Been Everywhere", " Hello Love", as well as other top 10 hits. Snow was an accomplished songwriter whose clear, baritone voice expressed a wide range of emotions including the joys of freedom and travel as well as the anguish of tortured love. His music was rooted in his beginnings in small-town Nova Scotia where, as a frail, youngster, he endured extreme poverty, beatings and psychological abuse as well as physically punishing labour during the Great Depression. Through it all, his musically talen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jimmy Walker
James John Walker (June 19, 1881November 18, 1946), known colloquially as Beau James, was mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932. A flamboyant politician, he was a liberal Democrat and part of the powerful Tammany Hall machine. He was forced to resign during a corruption scandal. Early life and political career Walker was the son of Irish-born William H. Walker (1842–1916), a carpenter and lumberyard owner who was very active in local politics as a Democratic assemblyman and alderman from Greenwich Village, belying certain accounts of Walker's childhood that stated he grew up in poverty. Walker was not the best of students and dropped out of college before eventually graduating from New York Law School in 1904. Walker's father wanted him to become a lawyer and politician. Walker at first decided that he would rather write songs and be involved in the music industry. He wrote the lyrics for a 1906 hit, "Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?" with songwriter Ernest Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stoney Cooper
Dale Troy Cooper (October 16, 1918 – March 22, 1977), known professionally as Stoney Cooper, was an American country star and member of the Grand Ole Opry. He played the fiddle and the guitar. Biography Cooper was the son of Kenny and Stella (Raines) Cooper of Harman, West Virginia, United States. His family was among the first settlers of Randolph and Pendleton counties, and these roots in the Appalachian mountains had an impact upon his music. While in high school, Cooper was a member of the Leary Family Singers. In 1939, he married Wilma Lee Leary. They became Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, one of the biggest country music acts of the 1940s through the 1960s. They had one daughter, Carol Lee Cooper. In 1947, they were cast members of ''WWVA Jamboree'' in Wheeling, West Virginia until 1957. Their band was called The Clinch Mountain Clan. In 1948, Cooper signed a recording contract with Columbia with the help of Fred Rose that lasted to 1955. In 1954, Cooper joined the G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilma Lee
Wilma Lee Leary (February 7, 1921 – September 13, 2011), known professionally as Wilma Lee Cooper, was an American country music entertainer. She was a guitarist, banjo player and vocalist, and was given the title of “First Lady of Bluegrass” by Smithsonian Institute in 1974. In 1994 She was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award from the IBMA. Biography Leary, according to the 1930 U.S. Census, was born Willma Leigh Leary in Valley Head, West Virginia whose mother was a schoolteacher and father who was a coal miner. Wilma’s mother played pump organ. She had two siblings, Jerry and Peggy. She began singing at the age of five. She sang in her youth with her family's gospel music group, The Leary Family, which included her parents and sisters. They recorded for the Library Of Congress in 1938. That year, they were also recognized at the National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C, having been chosen through a competition to represent the state of West Virginia. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ozark Jubilee
''Ozark Jubilee'' is a 1950s United States network television program that featured country music's top stars of the day. It was produced in Springfield, Missouri. The weekly live stage show premiered on ABC-TV on January 22, 1955, was renamed ''Country Music Jubilee'' on July 6, 1957, and was finally named ''Jubilee USA'' on August 2, 1958. Originating "from the heart of the Ozarks", the Saturday night variety series helped popularize country music in America's cities and suburbs,Shulman, Art "Dynamo–Country Style" (July 7, 1956), ''TV Guide'', p. 28 drawing more than nine million viewers. The ABC Radio version was heard by millions more starting in August 1954. A typical program included a mix of vocal and instrumental performances, comedy routines, square dancing and an occasional novelty act. The host was Red Foley, one of the nation's top country music personality having been ranked by Billboard as the #5 Top Country Artist for the 1940s and #5 in the 1950s. Big nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hawkshaw Hawkins
Harold Franklin "Hawkshaw" Hawkins (December 22, 1921 – March 5, 1963) was an American country music singer popular from the 1950s into the early 1960s. He was known for his rich, smooth vocals and music drawn from blues, boogie and honky tonk. At tall, Hawkins had an imposing stage presence, and he dressed more conservatively than some other male country singers. Hawkins died in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Cowboy Copas. He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry The ''Grand Ole Opry'' is a weekly American country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, founded on November 28, 1925, by George D. Hay as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM. Currently owned and operated by Opry Entertainment (a divis ... and was married to country star Jean Shepard. Biography Harold Hawkins was born on December 22, 1921, in Huntington, West Virginia, United States. He gained his nickname as a boy after helping a neighbor track down two missing fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia Theatre (Wheeling, WV)
The August Wilson Theatre (formerly the Guild Theatre, ANTA Theatre, and Virginia Theatre) is a Broadway theater at 245 West 52nd Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1925, the theater was designed by C. Howard Crane and Kenneth Franzheim and was built for the Theatre Guild. It is named for Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson (1945–2005). The August Wilson has approximately 1,225 seats across two levels and is operated by Jujamcyn Theaters. The facade is a New York City designated landmark. The facade is designed as a variation of a 15th-century Tuscan villa, with a stage house to the west and an auditorium to the east. The facade has a stucco surface and openings with quoins, as well as a loggia. The placement of window openings reflected the theater's original interior arrangement. The front of the theater had facilities for the Theatre Guild, including classrooms, studios, a club room, a library, and a book store. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
