Skeeterday

The late great Kentucky country-pop chanteuse Skeeter Davis was born on this date in 1931. We here at UnK commemorate one of our state's oddest contributions to pop culture with a few youtube links:

"The End of the World" - on some 60s TV show introduced by fellow Kentuckian Stringbean.

"Walking the Floor Over You" - Skeeter lays down the Ernest Tubb classic rendered in double-tracked harmony with a snappy Go-Go backing, kinda like Johnny Rivers goes Nashville.

"Singin' in the Summer Sun" is a wacky little Dixieland-tinged pop number. Perhaps she thought she was trying for the same ricky-tick vibe as Nat King Cole's "Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer".

"Above and Beyond" - Before there was the duo of Porter and Dolly, it was Porter and Skeeter! Here they boinkity-boink their way through the great Buck Owens tune.

World's Smallest Mother

Stacey Herald of Dry Ridge, KY, has given birth to Malachi, a healthy baby boy. At only 2 feet 4 inches tall, this makes a new world record for the smallest mother. Literally, a world record. Herald has osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic disorder that causes bones to become brittle and in danger of breaking easily. She has two other daughters, one of which inherited the condition but the other did not.

Herald says she and her husband want to have even more children in the future.

Barn Quilts

The concept of the painted "Barn Quilts" - like the one in Columbia, KY pictured above - goes back to the old traditional hex signs on the barns of the Pennsylvania Dutch, but the contemporary craze was started just a few years ago by a West Virginia woman named Donna Sue Groves. Reportedly, Groves began the project by painting a barn quilt in tribute to her mother, then just kept going with it via the Ohio Arts Council, encouraging more and more people to follow suit.


The Kentucky Quilt Trail is actually a related series of routes that are good places to gawk at barn quilts, all in the general area between Mt. Sterling, West Liberty, and Greenup. Trails travel through eight Eastern Kentucky counties in all: Montgomery, Menifee, Morgan, Bath, Rowan, Carter, Elliott, and Greenup.

Below: barn quilt in Dry Ridge, KY.

The Dry Ridge Monster

From the Kentucky Post, August 27, 2001:

In July 1964 things were hopping in Grant County. The annual county fair was about to start its four-day run on the grounds of Grant County High School. Among the events were horseshoe pitching, baby show, Miss Grant County competition, Junior Woman's Club variety show and flower show sponsored by the Carlsbad Garden Club.

Then ''it'' was seen.

''It'' was described as big, dark, about 7 feet tall with shiny eyes. ''It'' was seen at a trash dump off U.S. 36. With each pasing night, word spread of the monster. Carloads of people came out to try to catch a glimpse of the beast. Some people reported seeing bear-like footprints.

One local farmer said the crowds were a nuisance, ''shouting and shooting.'' He asked people to stay away, saying there was no monster.

Making headlines daily in The Kentucky Post, the matter turned serious when two 17-year-old boys were accidentally struck by shotgun pellets fired by a group of teen-agers hunting for the monster. The injuries were not life-threatening.

Meanwhile, police were receiving reports of other monster sightings.

Finally, officers speculated the ''monster'' was probably just an eccentric man, well known to police, who tended to wander around after dark, but who was apparently harmless.

They also announced plans to begin citing the carloads of people, many from Kenton and Campbell counties, who continued to show up for the monster hunts. One night officers chased away 14 carloads, many of which had people ''running around half-cocked with shotguns.''

Skeeter Davis

Like many stars of the Grand Ole Opry, Skeeter Davis was born and raised in Kentucky before reaching fame and fortune in Tennessee. And like many good Kentucky folk, her story is one riddled with peculiarities:

First and foremost, her name wasn’t even Skeeter Davis. It’s hard to fathom someone deliberately choosing “Skeeter” as a stage name, but there it is. Apparently it was her grandfather’s affectionate nickname for her, and she thought it would be a great idea to adopt it permanently. Her real name was Mary Penick, and she was born in Dry Ridge, KY in 1931.

The “Davis” name comes from her dead former partner, Betty Jack Davis from Corbin, KY. Skeeter and Betty sang together as a duo, billing themselves as The Davis Sisters. That they weren’t sisters and that Skeeter’s name wasn’t Davis didn’t seem to matter. Ms. Penick began calling herself Skeeter Davis to fit their story, and soon they had a hit record with RCA, “I Forgot More Than You’ll Ever Know” which reached number one on the Country charts and hit the Top 20 pop charts.

The two were in a late-night car accident in Cincinnati in 1954, killing Betty instantly and injuring Skeeter. Rather than dissolve the duo at a time when their hit record was climbing the charts, it was decided that Betty’s sister Georgia - a real Davis sister - would be sent out on the road to take the dead one’s place singing with Skeeter. The hope was that the average listener wouldn’t notice the switch, but evidently they did - the duo bombed without Betty.

Skeeter dissolved her partnership with Georgia in 1956 and went solo, using the latest multi-tracking technology to overdub harmonies with herself. Now Skeeter was her own Davis sister. She began a long string of hits as a solo artist throughout the next decade, most notably her apocalyptically oddball pop-crossover hit “The End of the World” (which many people assume is Lesley Gore when they hear it on oldies stations).

The 1970s were not as kind to Skeeter. In 1973 she was banned from the Grand Ole Opry for making a “political speech” complaining about the recent arrests of members of a conservative Christian group. It was noted by some that Roy Acuff had, only the week before, made an onstage plea to reinstate the death penalty after the murder of Stringbean, which was just as much a political statement as Skeeter’s yet received no fallout. Skeeter was allowed to return to the Opry in 1975, but the damage to her career had already been done and the hits had stopped coming by then.

As years went by, Skeeter gradually morphed into a sort of eccentric and spacey southern hippie character, and her onstage patter provided some of the more spirited - surreal, even - moments onstage at the Opry. Having been a second-tier member of the ensemble for much of her previous tenure there, her personality and charisma tended to dominate and shine above the non-entities she was forced to share the stage with in later years.

She died in 2004 at the age of 72, leaving behind a legacy of albums that range from the majestic (Singin’ In the Summer Sun) to the puzzling (Skeeter Davis Sings Buddy Holly).