I just wasn't ready to scuttle around at belt level in clodhoppers.
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21, 1927. When Byrd Moore left, Johnson added guitarist Lee "Red" Henderson and formed The Clodhoppers. The new band became successful, recording for Okeh Records in October 1927. Although he made his last recordings in 1931, Johnson continued to perform on radio and at fiddlers' conventions for the remainder of his life.
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Royce Nunley (born Royce Asher Nunley in 1976) is an American singer who currently sings lead vocals in Blueprint 76. He founded Blueprint 76 in 2002 after eight years in The Suicide Machines. He owns and runs Ringside Recording Studios and Broken Spoke Records in Detroit, Michigan. He has produced several mainstream bands such as The Insyderz, Tooth Fuzz, The Suicide Machines, The Van Ermans, Blueprint 76 and Mr. Meano and the Clodhoppers.
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In the rural south in particular, hokum held on. Cast members like Stringbean and Grandpa Jones were familiar with hokum (and blackface), and if bands named the "Clodhoppers" or the "Cut Ups" and other country cousins of this comedic form are fewer in number today, their presence is still a clue to the country and western, bluegrass, and string band tradition of mixing stage antics, broad parodies and sexual allusions with music.
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Born near Adairsville, Georgia, Fowler's father was the cotton king of Bartow County, Georgia until the Great Depression left him broken both in health and financially. He then struck out on his own, forming a country music group, Wally Fowler and the Georgia Clodhoppers,"Wally Fowler, Gospel Songwriter, 77" (June 7, 1994), Obituaries, The New York Times, p. B-7 which included Chet Atkins on lead guitar. They performed on WNOX-AM in Knoxville, Tennessee and became regulars on Mid-day Merry Go Round.
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The core group that would eventually lead to the Oak Ridge Boys was a country group called Wally Fowler and the Georgia Clodhoppers, formed in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. They were requested to perform for staff members and their families restricted during World War II at the nuclear research plant in nearby Oak Ridge, Tennessee. They were asked to sing there so often that eventually they changed their name to the Oak Ridge Quartet. And because their most popular songs were gospel, Fowler decided to focus solely on southern gospel music.
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Charles Wolfe, "Binkley Brothers' Dixie Clodhoppers." The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 35. Amos and Gale Binkley were born in Cheatham County, Tennessee, and were working as jewelry repairmen when they started playing for WSM in 1926. The Binkleys eventually joined up with Franklin-born guitarist Thomas William AKA "Tom" Andrews (1901-1984), Lawrenceburg, Lawrence County, Tennessee, he worked for the L & N Rail Road then a farmer, and Jonas "Jack" Jackson (1909-1994) Wilson County, Tennessee Farmer builder of Farm equipment.
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Doc Williams (June 26, 1914 - January 31, 2011) was an influential American country music band leader and vocalist. Born as Andrew John Smik, Jr. in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, and raised in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, he got his professional start playing with the Kansas Clodhoppers during the early 1930s. Doc eventually formed his own band, Doc Williams and the Border Riders. The group went on the air on WWVA Wheeling in 1937; soon, with the addition of comedian Froggie Cortez and cowboy crooner "Big Slim the Lone Cowboy", and became one of the station's most popular attractions.
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See also: Johnson City sessions The state of Tennessee once had a strong Old-time music tradition. In its earliest days the Grand Ole Opry featured banjo players, fiddle players, and string bands from Middle Tennessee such as Uncle Jimmy Thompson, Uncle Dave Macon, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, Sid Harkreader, the McGee Brothers, Humphrey Bate and his Possum Hunters, Binkley Brothers' Dixie Clodhoppers, the Gully Jumpers, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, and The Crook Brothers String Band. East Tennessee old-time artists include Clarence Ashley, Charlie Bowman, Uncle Am Stuart, Theron Hale, Curly Fox, and G. B. Grayson.
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After they led public attacks calling for his impeachment, McKean filed a partially successful libel suit against Duane in 1805. The Pennsylvania House of Representatives impeached the governor in 1807, but his friends prevented a trial for the rest of his term, and the matter was dropped. When the suit was settled after McKean left office, his son Joseph angrily criticized Duane's attorney for alleging, out of context, that McKean referred to the people of Pennsylvania as "Clodpoles" (clodhoppers).Pennsylvania Governors right Some of McKean's other accomplishments included expanding free education for all and, at age eighty, leading a Philadelphia citizens group to organize a strong defense during the War of 1812.
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Hay launched the WSM Barn Dance with 77-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson on November 28, 1925, and that date is celebrated as the birth date of the Grand Ole Opry. Some of the bands regularly on the show during its early days included Bill Monroe, the Possum Hunters (with Humphrey Bate), the Fruit Jar Drinkers with Uncle Dave Macon, the Crook Brothers, the Binkley Brothers' Dixie Clodhoppers, Sid Harkreader, DeFord Bailey, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, and the Gully Jumpers. Judge Hay liked the Fruit Jar Drinkers and asked them to appear last on each show because he wanted to always close each segment with "red hot fiddle playing." They were the second band accepted on Barn Dance, with the Crook Brothers being the first.
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Byrd was born in Nashville, Tennessee and learned to play the guitar at 10 and appeared on radio playing with local bands whilst still in his teens. At the age of 18 he joined the house band at Nashville's WSM Grand Ole Opry and then worked with Herold Goodman and the Tennessee Valley Boys and Wally Fowler and his Georgia Clodhoppers before and after serving in World War 2. In 1949 he commenced his most important association, that with Ernest Tubb as lead guitarist with the latter's Texas Troubadours, a position he occupied until 1959, followed by a second stint between 1969 and 1973, when he effectively retired from the music business. A self-taught guitarist influenced by jazz players such as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt, he tutored a number of well-known Nashville session players including Hank Garland and Harold Bradley.
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