Graves of Old-Time Country Musicians

Fiddlin' Doc Roberts, Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, KY.


Asa Martin, Hargett First Church of God Cemetery, Hargett, KY.


Bill Monroe, Rosine Cemetery, Rosine, KY.


Armour Cornelison, Jr., Richmond Cemetery, Richmond, KY.

Goober and his Kentuckians

Found this postcard for sale on VintagePostcards.org: a nice shot of Goober and the Kentuckians, suitable for framing.

Who was Goober? I don't even know. This page lists him as "Goober P. Nutt and the Kentuckians" but has no info other than a truly frightening photo wherein Goob's looking like a cross between Howdy Doody, Okie Jones, and the resurrected corpse of Archie. This blog evidently found the same postcard site as I did, but had nothing more to say.

And then there's this eBay auction from our friends at Bright's Antique World down in Franklin, where you can get this poster for "Uncle Remus Hush Puppies Dog Food", which apparently was the sponsor of a Goober and the Kentuckians TV show that aired Fridays at 5:45pm on WSIX-TV. It also uses the exact same promo postcard image.


WSIX-TV, however, is in Nashville. Or should I say, was - it's since morphed into WKRN. And this forum says that Goober, whose real name is Gib Buchanan, got his start on WDZ 1050 in Decatur, IL.

So was Goober even really a Kentuckian? The odds are actually against it, since it was seemingly very hip back in the day to be a Kentuckian, real or imagined - witness Henny Hendrickson's Louisville Serenaders, a bunch of Jersey guys who probably never set foot in Louisville in their lives. And Johnny Hamp's Kentucky Serenaders, based out of Pennsylvania.

Salty and Mattie

One of my favorite acts on those 1950s full-color "Stars of the Grand Ole Opry" films that have been making their way around America via truckstop tapes for years now: Salty and Mattie, who stuck out like a sore thumb with their magnificent harmonica-driven rock and roll blues antics like "Harmonica Boogie" and the baffling Popeye-goes-Halloween number "The Ghost Song". For years I wondered who the heck these two oddballs were and how they got to share a stage with superstars like Faron Young, Ernest Tubb, June Carter, Webb Pierce, Carl Smith and Jim Reeves.

The how still isn't clear, but I now know the who: Floyd "Salty" Holmes was from Glasgow, KY and was a founding member of the Kentucky Ramblers, who subsequently changed their name to the Prairie Ramblers and became best known as Patsy Montana's backing band. He also appeared in some early Western films, thanks to his friend Gene Autry pulling some strings for him.

Salty drifted into obscurity after he and Mattie were divorced in 1956, and he passed away on January 1, 1970.


Salty's wife Mattie (sometimes called Mattie Holmes, other times Mattie O'Neil) is actually Opal Jean Amburgey from Neon, KY.

Amburgey got her start recording and performing on Lexington's WKLP-AM with The Sunshine Sisters and then went on to brief fame as Jean Chapel, recording many rockers for Sun and RCA such as "I Won't Be Rockin' Tonight", "Don't Let Go", and "Welcome to the Club".

RCA tried to bill her as "the female Elvis" but by the early 1960s the buxom blonde rockabilly belter was largely forgotten. She went on to an even more successful songwriting career, however, writing songs for country stars such as Marty Robbins and Tammy Wynette. Her daughter Lana is also a singer-songwriter, having placed songs with Nancy Sinatra, Eddy Arnold, and Lester Flatt.

Jean/Mattie/Opal died in 1995. I've been unable to find out where she and Salty are each buried. Does anyone know?

Bonus Saltiness: "Stuck With Love", "John Henry", "Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain", and "Cannonball Special" with Joe Maphis.

Tom T. Hall

Tom T. Hall has become one of country music's most prominent elder statesmen, a fact that makes me feel rather smokehouse-aged myself since I vividly remember him from my childhood as being that guy who did gently goofy post-Roger Miller songs like "I Love", "Little Bitty", "How Do You Talk To A Little Baby Goat?", "I Like Beer" and "Sneaky Snake".

If you ask me, the fact that Mr. Hall is another good Kentucky boy (from Olive Hill) should be made more of a big deal by tourist-attraction types whose job it is to make big deals of such things. But no one asked me. So I'm ringing the supper bell to sing Tom's praises myself today.

Tom's first band, the Kentucky Travelers, released a few records on the Starday label, and according to Wikipedia, they "performed before movies for a traveling theater", a concept which piques my interest greatly. Did this "traveling theatre" tour nationally? Or just Kentucky?

But soon his songwriting skills took him to Nashville, where he had hit songs with "Harper Valley PTA" by Jeannie C. Riley, "DJ For A Day" by Jimmy C. Newman, "Hello Vietnam" for Johnny Wright (made even more famous years later as the opening theme from Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket.)

And by the late 1960s/early 1970s, he was a recording star in his own right, with songs like "I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew" (not to be confused with that other "Morning Dew" song) and "The Year That Clayton Delaney Died". Clayton Delaney, by the way, was a real person from easten Kentucky; a ramblin' rounder kinda guy who the young Tom idolized, just like the song says.

One of his songs, "A Week In A Country Jail", was based on a true story: Tom was pulled over by a cop in Paintsville, KY for speeding, and then arrested for expired tags on his car and for not having his drivers license on him. What was supposed to have been an overnight stay in the local jail turned into a week when the county's only Judge left town to attend a funeral. This Mayberry-gone-wrong story became a hit in 1969. Ironically, Paintsville is now the home of the U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum, which pays tribute to Tom's success.


Tom T. Hall is 74 now, but is still going strong with public appearances and live performances. You can write him at: Tom T. Hall, P.O. Box 1246, Franklin, TN, 37065.

Lyle Lovett, Horseman

Among the many celebrities lurking around the historic World Equestrian Games taking place in Lexington is Lyle Lovett, who has a nice feature article about him in yesterday's Courier-Journal:

Lovett, 52, raises about a half dozen “babies,” as he calls the foals, a year. They keep some, sell some and “give some away,” he said, laughing. But his love of horses is no joke.

“When I'm not playing music, I'm out in the barn,” he said.

In addition to being on the bill at the closing ceremonies, Lovett co-owns a horse, Smart and Shiney, who competed in the reining team event.

Pee Wee

I've always wondered about the nickname "Pee Wee" - from whence did it come, and with what was it associated?

One of baseball's all-time greats, Pee Wee Reese, was born in Ekron, KY (Meade County) in 1918 and was living in Louisville at the time of his death on August 14, 1999.

Just two days later, on August 16, 1999, the country music star Pee Wee King, also living in Louisville, also died.

King was best known for "You Belong To Me" (you know the song - "Seeeee the pyramids alonggggg the Niiiiiile....") He also wrote "The Tennessee Waltz" in an attempt to capitalize on Bill Monroe's success with "The Kentucky Waltz", but he also had many great Country and Western Swing songs over the years such as "Dragnet", "Slow Poke", "Why Don't Y'all Go Home?" and "Unbreakable Heart".


And then there's bluesman Pee Wee Crayton, and of course, that Pee-wee Herman guy. And growing up, I read Richie Rich comics, which had a character named Pee Wee. I also used to know a bonafide Kentucky Pee Wee: back in the 90s when I had antique-mall booths all over central Kentucky, I knew a fellow known only as "Pee Wee" who dealt in antique tools, hardware, coins, locks, and railroadiana.

But what is the etymology of the term "Pee Wee"? Why are these two syllables historically applied to children, or to people who are short in stature? (And many of the people with the nickname aren't even short at all.) According to the dictionary, Pee Wee means "One, such as a child, that is relatively or unusually small", and notes that it's probably a variant of "wee", meaning tiny.

It also suggests that "Pee Wee" is related to "Pewee", which is a type of bird. (Oddly, though, their own description refers to Pewees as "small" and as "large" in the exact same entry!)


Which brings us right back to Kentucky again - the city of Pewee Valley (the setting of the old "Little Colonel" books) in Oldham County is named after that bird. Apparently it was omnipresent enough here that the city's founders gave it that name, although no one's sure how "valley" got into it - the city is actually built on a crest, not a valley.

Arnold Shultz

Around the turn of the last century, there was a man named Arnold Shultz who wandered the Kentucky countrysides doing odd jobs and working in the occasional coal mine, but primarily living the true rounder/hobo/traveling songster lifestyle. This is itself is enough to earn Arnold Shultz a place of great respect in my heart, but the fact of the matter is, Shultz had a powerful effect on music history and should be recognized by any student of rural blues and country.

Muhlenberg County has always been regarded as the birthplace of a certain jaunty thumbpicking guitar style, better known as "Travis-style picking", after Merle Travis, who popularized it along with Chet Atkins. But Travis didn't invent the technique, nor did locals Mose Rager nor Ike Everly (whose children would later find fame as The Everly Brothers). The source for this peculiar style was none other than our Arnold Shultz, at least according to some historians.

But Shultz's influence didn't stop there. Bill Monroe himself regarded him as a mentor, and openly admitted his stylistic debt.

This all came at a time when black music and white music were cross-pollinating each other and creating bold new material, before terms like "blues" and "bluegrass" were firmly pinned down. Kentucky's fertile musical soil played a crucial role in this merger, as documented on CD by Yazoo Records on The Music of Kentucky Volume 1 and Volume 2, the Kentucky Mountain Music box set, and the Before the Blues series.

According to a great article about Shultz by Kathy and Don Thomason on bgdailynews.com, "Shultz died on April 14, 1931, officially of heart disease but in the regional lore he either died of “bad” whiskey or poison administered by jealous white musicians." He was buried in Morgantown in Boone County.

Stringbean's Hidden Treasure

David "Stringbean" Akeman, star of the Grand Ole Opry and Hee-Haw, was born in Annville, KY (also the birthplace of world champion fiddler Freddie Langdon) in 1916. Although he began his musical career as a banjoist at the age of 12, joined old-timey legend Asa Martin's band, and performed solo on radio stations such as WLAP in Lexington in the 1930s, it wasn't until the late 1940s when he really came into his own as a country music superstar.

That's when he struck up friendships with Grandpa Jones and Uncle Dave Macon, and became a regular on the Grand Ole Opry. A recording contract with Starday Records soon followed, and hit records such as "Chewing Gum". This, in turn, led to his stint on the hugely successful Hee-Haw television show, where he performed his old-timey tunes for a new generation of appreciative ears. He also had a running gag playing a scarecrow with a crow squawking on his shoulder, and did a regular routine called "Stringbean's Letters from Home" wherein he'd read mail (ostensibly) from the folks back in Annville.


Like many who grew up during the Great Depression, Stringbean had a great distrust of banks, and walked around with several thousand dollars on his person, in the front zip-pouch of his ubiquitous overalls (The overalls, by the way, were not a pose or a affectation - that's what he wore pretty much 24-7, onstage and off). It was well known around Nashville that String had his life's savings stashed away somewhere at home.

Some writers have hinted broadly that certain Hee-Haw cast members may or may not have been indirectly responsible for Stringbean's murder because of their blabbing about his money to others; but the fact is, Stringbean himself made it no secret, and often flashed the fist-sized wad of bills. Not out of ostentatiousness or bragging, but perhaps merely out of an innocent naivete about the evil and corrupt nature of his fellow man.

On November 10, 1973, John A. Brown and Marvin Douglas Brown conspired to follow Stringbean to his home as he left the Ryman Auditorium, for the purpose of taking his life's savings at gunpoint. Just as with the Kansas robbery-turned-murder case popularized in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the men failed to find any money in their home invasion, and out of frustration and confusion, ended up killing Stringbean and his wife Estelle for no good reason.


But the question then remained: what did happen to Stringbean's money?

It wasn't in the cookie jar, the medicine cabinet, under the mattress, pressed inside the family Bible, nor stashed in a sock drawer. The murderers had plenty of time to tear the place apart looking for it, but they found nothing. All they got away with was a saw and some of String's gun collection.

For years, fortune-seekers and treasure hunters risked arrest to trespass on the property, armed with metal detectors. They were certain that String had followed the longstanding southern tradition of burying his riches in tightly sealed mason jars somewhere in the yard, surrounding acres, or nearby wilderness. The money has to be here, they all thought, it simply has to be. Where else could it have gone? The house itself had seemingly been thoroughly ransacked, first by the burglars, then by everybody and their brother.

And they found..... nothing.

Had String been fibbing about his wealth? Had he actually secured a secret bank account, and used the "home under the mattress" story as dazzle camoflage to throw snoopers off the track?

23 years later, in 1996, the mystery was solved. Stringbean's lost treasure was accidentally discovered by a man who had moved into the house. A removable brick near the chimney revealed a hiding place in which over $20,000 in cash was found stashed, but the bills were decayed and partially eaten by rats. According to Wikipedia, $20,000 in 1973 was roughly equivalent to $98,565 today. Given String's income and his spartan, no-big-spending lifestyle, it's entirely possible that twice that amount could have originally been stashed, but ended up completely destroyed and lining some rat's nest.


Nowadays, the Stringbean Festival is held every year in Annville to pay tribute to the man. I was fortunate enough to have attended the inaugural event, which featured appearances by Grandpa Jones, Ramona Jones and Porter Wagoner, plus an early appearance by one of my favorite local combos, The Moron Brothers. The black Stringbean t-shirt I got there was my lucky fishin' shirt for years when I used to live in Berea and cast my line out at Owsley Fork.

The site for the Stringbean Festival consistently spells his name as "Akemon", but his own grave spells it "Akeman".

Hear some Stringbean mp3s by clicking here.