Big Jeff Bess (2 September 1920 - August 23, 1998) was an American country singer, radio personality and former co-owner of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.
Grover Franklin Bess was born near Ashland City in Cheatham County, Tennessee where his parents sharecropped a 60 acre farm. The nickname "Big Jeff" came from pronouncing his initials and his six foot frame. Jeff moved to Nashville about 1940 and by 1942 was appearing on WSIX. He also seems to have worked in tent shows. By late 1945 or early 1946, he was on WLAC with a show of his own. This station had several daytime acts with shows including Mac O'Dell, Ted & Wanda Henderson, Jack & Louise Henderson, and later Mel & Stan. But Big Jeff & His Radio Playboys seemed dominant and most long-lasting. Hattie Louise, by then known as Tootsie, married Jeff and became the Playboys' on-stage comedian and de facto manager. Big Jeff's tenure at the station lasted about sixteen years, eventually as mostly a deejay.
The Radio Playboys were not only a popular band but were something of a proving ground for musicians who became better known later. These included Benny Martin, George McCormick, Grady Martin, Johnny Sibert (steel player for Carl Smith in his prime years), Carl Tipton, and Hillious Buttram. Big Jeff made his mark on Nashvilles club scene. At various times he owned Ship Ahoy, on Franklin Road, Big Jeff's Country Club in Germantown, then the King of Clubs on Clarksville Highway. In one instance he was fined $25 for hitting someone who he was trying to force to leave "Big Jeff's Place" on Clarksville Highway in June of 1957. He thought the person had too much to drink and possibly tried to hit Jeff as Jeff was trying to get him into a car. During the 50's he also owned a catfish diner on the east side of the Cumberland River where many musicians would go via ferry aftertheir weekend Opry performances.
During this time he recorded rather sparingly on small labels. The greater number of Jeff's recordings appeared on Randy Woods' Dot label that was based in Gallatin, Tennessee before it had attained much prestige (that came from Pat Boone's rise to fame). At the time, phonograph platters were not of much consequence to one who was doing well. Big Jeff also appeared in a couple of movies, A Face in the Crowd and Wild River. In the former film, he played a husky sheriff named "Big Jeff Bess," in the latter he sang "In the Pines." Big Jeff. In March 1960, Tootsie and Jeff took over the lease of a club, Mom's Place, on Nashville's Lower Broadway. The club name changed to Tootsie's Place, and, finally, to Tootsie's Orchid Lounge after a decorator painted the exterior a vivid purple.
In October 1960, Sheriff Leslie Jett was trying to crack down on minors frequenting drinking establishments. After repeated warnings, he said the next step would be arrests. On a Friday night, Franklin Big Jeff Bess was cited at Tootsie's for allowing minors to loiter where beer is consumed. However, the charge was dismissed in General Sessions Court on Monday, October 24, 1960 after three deputies disagreed in their testimony. Troubles seemed to find him. He was given a $100 fine and a 30-day workhouse term after he pled guilty to charges of illegal possessing whiskey for resale. He was operating of an unnamed Nashville beer tavern at the time.
Another article reported his establishment was raided in November 1962 and he was charged with selling, tippling and storing 46 half-pints of whiskey which was confiscated. However in April, his sentence had been suspended. His attorney had argued that the publicity resulting from his client's trial had provided "sufficient punishment" of Big Jeff in this case. As the 1960's came and went, Big Jeff's fortunes began to decline. Live radio on morning shows were fading away as deejays began to replace most of them (Flatt & Scruggs on WSM being a notable exception). He and his wife, Hattie Louise divorced in 1961; she got Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and he got another club or two that soon folded.
Later Big Jeff worked for a time as a deputy sheriff (reprising his movie role). He made some recordings for Delta in the early seventies. Then in the 1980's, he suffered a stroke. His third wife, Jo Neill, died in 1996 and becoming diabetic he had a leg amputated. He also endured a throat operation that required him to breath and speak through an electronic voice box. Living alone in a mobile home, he declined rapidly but was sometimes cheered by old friends like Benny Martin and Hillous Buttram.
He died at the age 77 in Davidson, Tennessee due to complications from diabetes.
Willie Ruff (September 1, 1931 – December 24, 2023) was an American jazz musician, specializing in the French horn and double bass, and a music scholar and educator, primarily as a Yale professor from 1971 to 2017.
Willie Henry Ruff Jr. was born in Sheffield, Alabama. He was one of eight children, and his father left the family before Willie was a year old. His mother died from tuberculosis when he was 13.Willie then went to live with his father and attend high school in Evansville, Indiana. In 1946, at age 14, he lied about his age, forged his father's signature, and joined the Army on the expectation of developing a career as a drummer. When the band had too many percussionists and the horns were the weakest section, Willie volunteered to learn to play the horn. He learned on his own from an Oscar Franz method book, practicing in the boiler room.
When Willie was 16 years old and playing in the band at segregated Lockbourne Air force Base near Columbus, Ohio, he started taking lessons from Abe Kniaz, first horn in the Columbus Philharmonic Orchestra. He discovered that he had been using incorrect fingerings and soon improved his technique, musical knowledge, and other knowledge under Kniaz's guidance. It was while stationed at Lockbourne that Willie met his future duo partner, Dwike Mitchell, who recruited Ruff to play bass with his unit band for an Air Force radio program. Ruff continued to study orchestral horn, and attended the Yale School of Music as an undergraduate (Bachelor of Music, 1953) and graduate student (Master of Music, 1954). He then joined Lionel Hampton's band, with which Mitchell was already playing, and the two musicians left to form a duo in 1955.
Together as the Mitchell-Ruff Duo, they played as "second act" to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie. From 1955 to 2011, the duo regularly performed and lectured in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The 1959 Mitchell-Ruff Duo was the first jazz band to play in the Soviet Union. In 1966 they accompanied President Lyndon Johnson to Mexico, and the following year they made a film in Brazil which traced the African roots of Brazilian music. Ruff was chosen by John Hammond to be the bass player for the recording sessions of Songs of Leonard Cohen, an album first released in 1967. During those sessions, he and Cohen laid down the bed tracks for most of the songs on the album.
Ruff was a faculty member at the Yale School of Music from 1971 until his retirement in 2017, teaching music history, ethnomusicology, and arranging. Ruff's classes at Yale, often with partner Dwike Mitchell, were free-flowing jam sessions: roller-coaster rides through the colours of American Improvisational Music. The duo could play in the style of most notable jazz artists and related styles. They had a large repertoire. Ruff was founding Director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, a community-based organization sponsoring artists mentoring and performing with Yale students and young musicians from the New Haven Public School System. The program was founded in 1972 as a "Conservatory Without Walls" to "'capture the essence and spirit' of the tradition of African-American music". By its 30th anniversary in 2002, the program had reached an estimated 180,000 students in New Haven schools.
The Duo in China
From 1976 to 1977, he held a visiting appointment at Duke University, where he oversaw the jazz program and directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble. In 1979, with the scientist John Rodgers, he recorded a realization of Harmonices mundi. He was also on the faculty at UCLA and Dartmouth. The Mitchell-Ruff trio played in China in 1981. Ruff was one of the founders of the W. C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama. The first festival was first held in 1982. In 1983 Ruff recorded as an unaccompanied soloist in St. Marks basilica in Venice. He was fluent in eight languages, and his unusual talents as both a performer and a teacher have helprd to make jazz accessible to audiences throughout the world.
Mingus, Ellington & Ruff
In 1992, Ruff published his memoir, titled A Call to Assembly: The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller. The autobiography was hailed as "an unmitigated delight" and was awarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Ruff was a 1994 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame. In 2000, he received the Connecticut Governor's Arts Award for his work with the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program. In May 2013, he was awarded the Sanford Medal. The Sanford Medal is the highest honour from Yale University's School of Music.
Ruff was known for uncovering links between traditional black gospel music and unaccompanied psalm singing. Ruff's theory was that the Scottish Presbyterian practice of lining out, in which a precentor read or chanted a line of the psalm, which was then sung by the congregation, led to the call and response form of black gospel music. Ruff co-created the documentary "A Conjoining of Ancient Song", which focuses on a rapidly vanishing form of congregational singing that is shared by Scottish, African American, and Native American music. It received its world premiere screening at Yale in 2013. Ruff's work in this area was also a subject of Sterlin Harjo's 2014 documentary film, This May Be the Last Time.
Throughout his time with the duo, Dwike Mitchell maintained a residence in New York City and a parallel career teaching piano there. In 2012, after becoming ill, he returned to his native South, spending his last months in Jacksonville, Florida where he died on April 7, 2013, of pancreatic disease. Ruff retired from teaching at Yale in 2017. A year later, the university bestowed on Ruff an honorary doctorate. He died at his home in Killen, Alabama on December 24, 2023, at the age of 92.
(Edited from the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, The Horn Society & Wikipedia)
Caroline Paton (31 August 1932 -18 March 2019) was a singer of traditional and contemporary folk songs with a bright, beautiful voice; an amazing recall of lyrics; and a talent for harmony, also a co-owner of Folk-Legacy Records.
Caroline Ann Swenson was born with a sight-impairment. She grew up in Whiting, Indiana, near Chicago and first became intrigued by folk music at summer camps where she was a counsellor. By the time she started college, her interest in folk music was well-established. Caroline studied for two years at Oberlin College before transferring to the University of Chicago, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology. Wanting to experience the western United States, Caroline took a job at the University of California library in Berkeley, California, at the same time exploring ways to pursue her interests in literature, music and anthropology.
She met her husband Sandy Paton, at a concert in 1957 after she asked him for lyrics to the song he had performed that night. Sandy had already noticed her in the front row as she was harmonizing with his singing. They connected immediately over their love of folk music, and sang that song together for many years. Later, they travelled in England performing in London clubs, studying British folk music, and listening to recordings at Cecil Sharp House. They took a trip to Scotland with their 9-month-old son David to spend time with Jeannie Robertson, a renowned ballad singer from Aberdeen, Scotland, and Hamish Henderson of the School of Scottish Studies.
After returning to the States, they established the label Folk-Legacy in 1961 with a friend Lee B. Haggerty. It was an independent record company which introduced many voices of the East Coast folk revival, such as Gordon Bok or Rosalie Sorrels, as well as artists of the older generation, including the Kentucky singer Sarah Ogan Gunning and the North Carolina banjo player and singer Frank Proffitt.
Over the next 50 years, Caroline and Sandy brought music and joy to thousands through performances, special gatherings, and sales of the traditional and contemporary folk recordings they produced. As performing artists and in keeping with the folk tradition, the Patons encouraged the audience at their own concerts to sing along on choruses and be active participants in the folk music experience. She and her husband sang together for many years before being joined by their musical sons and singing grandchildren. Folk-Legacy’s home-based operation and music was featured in the New York Times in 1981.
Caroline and Sandy’s Folk-Legacy sales booth was a steadfast presence at the Old Songs Folk Festival, the New England Folk Festival, and historically at the Champlain Valley Folk Festival. The Patons were given the honorary designation of Connecticut State Troubadours in 1993. Caroline and Sandy also received awards and accolades from the California Traditional Music Society, the Memphis Dulcimer Festival in Tennessee, the Folk Alliance, and the Eisteddfod Festival of Traditional Arts in Massachusetts.
Sandy Paton who was born in Florida, USA on 22 January 1929, later suffered from emphysema which required that he was constantly connected to oxygen. He died in Sharon, Connecticut USA on 26 July 2009. In November 2018, Caroline sold Folk-Legacy to the Smithsonian Institution. After living in a Connecticut nursing home for a year she died on 18 March 2019 at the age of 86.
Chuck Miller (30 August 1924 – 15 January 2000) was an American singer and pianist who had a US top ten hit in 1955 with his version of "The House of Blue Lights".
Charles Nelson Miller was born in Wellington, Kansas, United States, and little is known of his early life. One of four children, he learned to play piano as a child and by the mid 1940s had become a professional musician in the Los Angeles area, alongside other singer/pianists such as Nat Cole and Charles Brown. He became friendly with saxophonist Big Dave Cavanaugh and formed a bond with Cavanaugh's bass-player, Robert Douglass, who would become instrumental in helping Miller form his own trio for personal appearances and became the group's chief arranger as well as playing the bass. They began touring as the Chuck Miller Trio in the late 1940s, but California was awash with similar groups and record deals were hard to come by.
Dave Cavanaugh
Chuck Miller began recording for Capitol with Cavanaugh's band and the first singles, released in 1953-54, were firmly in the MOR pop and novelty moulds, heavily inspired by Miller's twin influences of Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. Chuck's third release however was a cover of Wade Ray's "Idaho Red" - a hillbilly truck-driving song written by a real truck driver, Frank Kauzlaric. Wade Ray's original recording had been in the western swing style, but Miller's more urbane arrangement sold well too and caused Capitol to swiftly scour their stockpile of unissued tracks for a lively follow-up. Chuck's self-penned "Hopahula Boogie" had been cut by the trio in a break from the usual orchestral fare and, although it wasn't a big seller, it set the style for much of what Miller would produce in the next few years.
In early 1955 Chuck Miller left Capitol for a new recording contract with Mercury Records. His debut with the label paired his own classy pop song, "Can't Help Wonderin'", with the hip revival of Freddie Slack's old swing-era classic "The House of Blue Lights" - both arranged by Robert Douglass - which would soon prove to be his most successful single. It did so well during the summer of 1955 - spending 14 weeks on the Best Seller chart, peaking at #9 - that Capitol Records rushed out a fifth single from their stockpile, but the sides remaining with his debut label were a bit corny compared to what Miller was then laying down for Mercury.
Chuck Miller Trio
Having proven his success with cover versions, Mercury next had Chuck cover Bobby Lord's jaunty country rocker, "Hawk-Eye" written by Boudleaux Bryant, which they paired with another solid Miller-penned ballad "Something To Live For". The single was nowhere near as successful as the first, so for the follow-up they decided to expand the sound of the Chuck Miller Trio to include horns and the resulting single was quite spectacular, with another rocked-up swing-era classic, Gene Krupa's "Boogie Blues" coupled with an eldritch novelty full of voodoo symbolism called "Lookout Mountain". The latter was so unusual that RCA's chief A\&R executive, Steve Sholes, sent the record to the young singer he had just signed (but not yet recorded) to consider for his upcoming debut session. Sadly, as far as is known, Elvis never recorded the appealingly sinister song written by one Seymour Lazar, even though "Heartbreak Hotel" had been cast from the same mould.
By 1956, due mainly to that boy Elvis, rock 'n' roll was running rampant and Miller was now teamed in New York City with Hugo Peretti's small studio orchestra to sample the charts and run the gamut from the out-and-out motor-head madness of "Bright Red Convertible", the Tennessee Ernie-like "Baltimore Jones", the MORish "Good Mornin' Darlin'" and the bubbly "Baby Doll", the latter composed for the controversial Elia Kazan film of the same name. Hugo Peretti also arranged Chuck's fine cover of Leroy Van Dyke's country novelty hit "The Auctioneer", which gave him his only other taste of national chart success when it peaked at #59 on the Hot Hundred in December 1956.
On another occasion in Chicago in 1956, with support provided by David Carroll's orchestra, Chuck covered Bob Temple's King rocker "Vim Vam Vamoose" (which alludes to Presley and "Heartbreak Hotel") and the minor rock 'n' roll classic "Cool It Baby!" which had been featured by The Treniers in the movie "Teenage Rebel" and would achieve celluloid rock excellence with Eddie Fontaine's version in the mighty "Girl Can't Help It" movie later in the year. During that year Mercury honoured Chuck with his first LP; an album called Songs After Hours With Chuck Miller (Mercury LP MG-20195), on which he and his trio indulged their love of swing-era music ("I Can't Give You Anything But Love", "Cow Cow Boogie", "September In The Rain", etc.) as well as cutting loose with a couple of breakneck eponymous rockin' boogies and a very nice version of "Re-Enlistment Blues", famous for the rendition by Merle Travis in the 1953 Columbia film From Here To Eternity.
Chuck Miller's swansong for Mercury Records was another old Freddie Slack boogie woogie classic from the early 1940s. Miller's pounding version of "Down the Road A-Piece" was backed by an energetic take on "Mad About Her Blues". Inexplicably, like his previous releases, the single went nowhere and he was dropped by Mercury at the end of his contract, but was swiftly snapped up by California-based Imperial Records where he cut a variable LP called Now Hear This! Songs Of The Fighting 40s.The Imperial deal seems to have contracted for just one album and subsequently Chuck Miller faded into obscurity. He and his trio had a residency in Boise, Idaho for a while, before Miller moved to Anchorage, Alaska, did a stint playing piano in The Sage Room at Harvey's Lake Tahoe, and later to Maui where he played at The Whale's Tale for many years. He later retired to Hawaii where he lived in Lahaina, Maui. He died aged 75 in the Maui Memorial Hospital on 15th January 2000, where a very modest obituary appeared in the local Honolulu Star Bulletin newspaper, in which he was described as a “self-employed entertainer”.
Albertina Walker (August 29, 1929 – October 8, 2010) was an American gospel singer, songwriter and humanitarian.
The Caravans 1957
Walker was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ruben and Camilla Coleman Walker. Her mother was born in Houston County, Georgia, and her father in Bibb County, Georgia. They moved to Chicago between 1917 and 1920 where they lived out their lives. Albertina had four siblings born in Bibb County and four born in Chicago. Albertina began singing in the youth choir at the West Point Baptist Church at an early age, and joined several Gospel groups thereafter, including the Pete Williams Singers, the Willie Webb Singers, and the Robert Anderson Singers.
The Caravans 1960
Albertina was greatly influenced by Mahalia Jackson, her friend and confidante, whom Jackson took on the road when Albertina was just a teenager. "Mahalia used to kid me. She'd say, 'Girl, you need to go sing by yourself'", recalled Walker in a 2010 Washington Post interview. Walker did just that. In the early 1950s, Walker founded her own Gospel music group The Caravans, enlisting fellow singers from The Robert Anderson Singers (Ora Lee Hopkins, Elyse Yancey and Nellie Grace Daniels). The Caravans' membership included: James Cleveland, Bessie Griffin, Shirley Caesar, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews, Loleatta Holloway, Cassietta George, and Delores Washington.
The Caravans 1965
Her discovery of these artists resulted in the nickname "Star Maker". The Caravans signed in 1957 with Savoy Records, which also acquired rights to their earlier sides for States. All of their recordings for Savoy were issued on Gospel, a subsidiary of the Newark, New Jersey–based parent label. The Caravans moved to Chicago’s Vee-Jay Records in 1962 but briefly returned to Savoy’s Gospel label four years later.
The Caravans’ star began to dim following Shirley Caesar’s 1966 departure. The group laboured on for several more years, recording for the Gospel, Hob and Jewel labels before Walker threw in the towel in the early ’70s. Members of later editions of the group included future disco star Loleatta Holloway and singing pianist Willie James McPhatter.
She was popularly referred to as the "Queen of Gospel Music", initially by such notables as the late Reverend James Cleveland and Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr, for her outstanding achievements within the genre after the death of Mahalia Jackson in 1972. The second act in Walker’s career began in 1975 when she emerged as a solo artist with an album for Polydor Records. It generated little attention. In 1978, however, she re-signed with Savoy, which partnered her with Cleveland for a strong-selling album titled Reunion. The next release with her lifelong friend, 1979’s Please Be Patient with Me, did even better and remains a classic of her extensive discography. In addition to the two discs with Cleveland, Walker made six more albums for Savoy between 1981 and ’88 on which she was backed by various choirs. Later recordings appeared on the Benson, Word, Rejoice, A&M, and Verity labels through 1997.
To date, she has recorded over 60 albums, including gold selling hits "Please Be Patient With Me", "I Can Go to God in Prayer", "The Best Is Yet to Come", "Impossible Dream", and "Joy Will Come". Walker sang for United States presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and South Africa's president, Nelson Mandela. Walker is featured in Who's Who in Black America as well as other volumes related to the Golden Age of Gospel Music. She received several keys to various cities and was honoured at the Chicago Gospel Festival where a bench bearing her name was placed in downtown Chicago's Grant Park. The City of Chicago paid tribute to Albertina by renaming 35th and Cottage Grove "Albertina Walker and The Caravans Drive".
She was also conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters Degree by the Chicago Theological Seminary, an institution of the University of Chicago. Walker co-founded the Gospel Music Workshop of America along with James Cleveland. She lent her support to many other groups. In 1988, she founded The Albertina Walker Scholarship Foundation for the Creative and Performing Arts, which offers financial assistance to college students in the form of scholarships to further their education in the field of music.
In 1995, Walker joined Thelma Houston, CeCe Peniston, Phoebe Snow and Lois Walden to record a gospel album in common, Good News in Hard Times, as the quintet called The Sisters of Glory. Walker recorded a reunion album with her group The Caravans entitled Paved the Way, which was released by Malaco Records on September 5, 2006. Performers included Walker, Dorothy Norwood, Inez Andrews and Delores Washington. The album was dubbed by Billboard magazine as one of the most memorable releases of 2006 and entered the Billboard charts in the top ten and remained in the top forty for sixteen weeks. Paved the Way was nominated for a Grammy, Dove, Soul Train Music Award and two Stellar Awards.
Albertina in 2003
Walker earned many awards and honours over her six decades of music ministry. Among them, 5 Gold Records; several Gospel Music Workshop of America Excellence Awards; an induction into the 2001 Gospel Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. She is also a recipient of a 2005 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, which is the United States government's highest honour in the folk and traditional arts.
2010
A smoker of cigarettes for many years, the lifelong Chicagoan suffered from emphysema. On her 81st birthday, Walker was admitted to a local Chicago hospital and placed on a ventilator. At the time, she was in ICU dealing with respiratory problems–a condition she battled for years, and kept her on oxygen. On Tuesday, September 7, Walker had a tracheostomy which doctors deemed a success, and she checked out of a Chicago hospital in late September and was admitted to RML specialty hospital for follow up care. She died on October 8, 2010.
Billy Grammer (August 28, 1925 – August 10, 2011) was an American country music singer and accomplished guitar player. He recorded the million-selling "Gotta Travel On", which made it onto both the country and pop music charts in 1959. Grammer would become a regular performer on the Grand Ole Opry, eventually designing, and marketing his namesake guitar after co-founding a guitar company, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Billy Wayne Grammer, the eldest of 13 children (nine boys and four girls), was born in Benton, Illinois. His father was a musician; he played the violin and trumpet. Billy served in the US Army during World War II, and upon discharge worked as an apprentice toolmaker at the Washington Naval gun factory at Shop No. 20. Grammer married his high-school girlfriend, Ruth Burzynski, in 1944. Shortly after the war ended, 18,000 of a 24,000-strong workforce were laid off, including Grammer. The couple returned to their home in Franklin County, Illinois.
When Grammer and his wife were living in Washington D.C., he was hired by Connie B. Gay as a singer in support of Gay's WARL radio program: Town and Country Time. When Gay was preparing to replace the session guitarist, Grammer demonstrated his own guitar prowess, and was re-contracted in a dual-role as both singer and lead guitarist.
After being signed by Monument Records in Nashville, Tennessee, Grammer scored a big hit with the million-selling single: "Gotta Travel On", copyrighted by David Lazar, Larry Ehrlich, Paul Clayton and Tom Six. The song peaked at No. 4 on the U.S. Pop Singles chart and No. 5 on the Hot Country Songs chart in 1959. That same year, he became a regular cast member on the Grand Ole Opry. Grammer named his band after his most notable hit as The Travel On Boys. "Gotta Travel On" was used as the opening song by Buddy Holly on his final tour in January and February 1959, which ended in tragedy. He recorded the first chart version of Bobby Bare's "Detroit City", entitled "I Wanna Go Home". It hit the Billboard country chart in early 1963.
Grammer founded RG&G (Reid, Grammer & Gower) Company in 1965 with Clyde Reid and J.W. Gower. RG&G made the Grammer guitar from 1965 until 1968, when a fire consumed the factory in downtown Nashville. The company was then sold to Ampeg, and a new factory was erected down the street from the old one. The company was renamed Grammer Guitar, Inc. (GGI). GGI produced the Grammer guitar until 1970. His guitar was installed into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville on March 1, 1969.
On May 15, 1972, Grammer and the Travel on Boys played at the rally in Laurel, Maryland where Alabama governor George Wallace was shot. Grammer and his band played the "Under the Double Eagle" march as Wallace mounted the stage to speak. After he spoke, Wallace mingled with the crowd, and Arthur Bremer shot a concealed handgun at the presidential candidate. The outcome was Wallace's paralysis, leaving him using a wheelchair for the rest of his life. "I've said all along, if they wanted to do something like this, they do it under these circumstances," Grammer said, weeping, after the incident.
Grammer delivered the invocation for the Grand Ole Opry House opening on March 16, 1974. In 1990, he was inducted into the Illinois Country Music Hall of Fame, along with Tex Williams, Lulu Belle and Scotty, and Patsy Montana. Grammer suffered from the degenerative eye disease retinitis pigmentosa and became completely blind. On February 27, 2009, he was honoured by the Grand Ole Opry for his 50-year membership.
Grammer died on August 10, 2011, aged 85, at Benton Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for a long-term illness, which included suffering a heart attack seven months earlier.
Wade Frugé (August 27, 1916 – June 23, 1992) was a was a full-time farmer and part-time fiddler in southwest Louisiana.
Wade Frugé was one of the last of the great old timey Cajun fiddlers. Known for his delicate grace notes, piercing chords and powerful bowing, Fruge combined soulful playing with highly-skilled articulation. Although never a full-time musician, Frugé's love of music gave his playing a rarely-heard emotional depth.
Born Wade Joseph Frugé in Tasso near Eunice, Louisiana, he was raised in a rural farming community, he balanced a life of agriculture—raising sheep and farming—with a deep dedication to the traditional music of his region. Frugé learned to play the fiddle from local contemporaries and elders, including his grandfather Napoleon Frugé and blues-tinged fiddler, Douglas Ballard, absorbing the nuances of the old Cajun style that was rapidly disappearing by the mid-20th century.
Here's "La Vieille Chanson De Mardi Gras" from above LP
He married Evelyn Courville in 1942 and adopted a child, maintaining a quiet family life alongside his musical pursuits. Throughout his life, Frugé remained a part-time musician, performing primarily at local gatherings and house dances rather than pursuing commercial fame.
Wade at Mardi Gras
His playing was celebrated for its qualities that made him one of the last great exponents of the 'old timey' Cajun fiddle tradition. Wade was discovered by accordion maker and musician Marc Savoy playing at local house parties in the 1970s.
His only album "Old Style Cajun Music", was released in 1988 comprising of fifteen studio recordings, recorded at Marc Savoy’s home over a 10-year period from 1979 to 1989. The album was re-issued in 1998 with an extra ten selections never before released with the final selection on the album “Frugé Waltz,” which is a fiddle duet with Beausoleil’s Michael Doucet.
Wade Frugé died June 23, 1992 (aged 75) and was buried in Mount Calvary Cemetery, Eunice, St. Landry Parish, Louisiana.
Frugé's legacy is that of a cultural preservationist, keeping alive the authentic Cajun fiddle style and passing it on to younger generations. His recordings and mentorship have influenced a new wave of musicians dedicated to traditional Cajun music, ensuring that the sound of southwest Louisiana endures.
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