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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
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October 20, 2002
Grandpa Jones, vaudevillian folk music professor
Louis Marshall Jones was born October 20, 1913 in Niagra, Kentucky. He came from a strain of thinking of country music as something of a vaudeville show. He billed himself as "Grandpa Jones" as young as 22 years old, drawing lines on his face to look old, and affecting a "grandpa" look with the wire rim glasses and knee high boots.
He never sold a lot of records. His only top 10 country hit was a 1963 cover of Jimmie Rodger's "T for Texas"- and a fine cover it was. [Jimmie Rodgers also recorded his classic "Blue Yodel #4 (California Blues)" this day in 1928.]
Nonetheless he was well known as a live act, on radio shows, and of course many years on the Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw, one of the most underappreciated shows in television history. It gave him a perfect forum for his style of picking and joking.
Besides being a fine banjo picker and showman, Jones took an unassuming but near academic interest in folk music. He played the folk circuit all his life, and spent many years learning scads of ancient songs from the hills and the old countries. He would never have wanted to be a "professor" but he could have taught classes on folk music traditions.
He was a member of the Grand Ole Opry for over 50 years, from 1947 till his death in 1998.
Grandpa Jones scored two of his best performances with Scotty Wiseman songs. "Mountain Dew" is probably one of his two or three best known recordings. Another lesser known Wiseman song is well worth digging up, a wide ranging political broadside that was perhaps even better: his early 1950's recording "I'm No Communist."
Congress has appointed a committee so they said
To find out who's American and who's a low down red
They called them up to Washington to speak for Uncle Sam
But when they asked them what they are they shut up like a clam
I wish they'd take and put me on the witness stand today
I'd shout so loud old Stalin could hear me all the way:
I'm no communist, I'll tell you that right now
I believe a man should own his home and house and car and cow
I like this private ownership
I want to be left alone
Let the government run their business, and let me run my own
Grandpa Jones on MoreThings
 Labels: country_music
posted by Al at 10/20/2002 01:09:00 AM
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