- Grandpa Jones
Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones (
October 20 ,1913 –February 19 ,1998 ) was an Americanbanjo player and "old time" country andgospel music singer.Background
Born in the farming community of Niagara in
Henderson County, Kentucky , Jones spent his teenage years inAkron, Ohio , where he began singing country music tunes on a local radio show. By 1935 his pursuit of a musical career took him toWBZ (AM) radio inBoston, Massachusetts where he met musician/songwriterBradley Kincaid , who gave him the nickname "Grandpa" because of his off-stage grumpiness at early-morning radio shows. Jones liked the name and decided to create a stage persona based around it.Performing as "Grandpa Jones," he played the
banjo , yodeled, and sang mostly old-timeballad s. The vaudevillian humor was a bridge to television entertainment. Jones used the old fashioned style of banjo playing calledfrailing , which gave a rough backwoods flavor to his performances. Some of his more famous songs include, "T for Texas", "Night Train to Memphis" and "Mountain Dew." He also wrote the song "Eight More Miles to Louisville". Moving toNashville, Tennessee , he became part of the "Grand Ole Opry " and was a regular cast member on the popular TV show, "Hee Haw ".Jones was one of the most popular cast members of the long-running "
Hee Haw ". A favorite skit had off-camera cast members asking "Hey Grandpa, what's for supper?", to which he'd describe either a delicious, country-style meal ("Buttermilk biscuits smothered in chicken gravy, home-fried potatoes,collard greens and Grandmother's fresh-baked blueberry pie à la mode!" and the cast would reply, "Yum, yum!") or, more often than not, something terrible ("Because you were bad, thawed outTV dinner s!" at which the cast would scoff, "Yuck!"). A running gag was that the window he was pretending to polish in this skit had no glass, and that Jones would slip his fingers through the empty panes. Jones also joined castmatesBuck Owens ,Roy Clark andKenny Price with a gospel segment at the end of each show.A resident of rural
Ridgetop, Tennessee outside of Nashville, he was a neighbor and friend of fellow musicianDavid "Stringbean" Akeman . On the morning ofNovember 11 ,1973 , Jones discovered the bodies of Akeman and his wife who had been murdered during the night by robbers.In 1978 Grandpa Jones was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame . His autobiography, "Everybody's Grandpa: Fifty Years Behind The Mike" was published in 1984 (written with assistance from Charles K. Wolfe).In January 1998, Jones suffered a stroke after his second show performance at the
Grand Ole Opry . He died onFebruary 19 ,1998 . Jones was buried in the Luton Memorial Methodist Church cemetery in Nashville.References
*Jones, Louis M. "Grandpa" with Charles K. Wolfe. (1984). "Everybody's Grandpa: Fifty Years Behind The Mike". Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.
*Wolfe, Charles K. (1998). "Grandpa Jones". In "The Encyclopedia of Country Music". Paul Kingsbury, Editor. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 269-270.External links
* [http://www.grandpajones.net.tc Official Fanpage]
* [http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/jones_grandpa/artist.jhtml CMT.com profile]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu0Lt5AxSdA Are You From Dixie?]* [http://www.countrymusichalloffame.com/site/inductees.aspx?cid=133 Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum]
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