Any old timer around Kentucky’s Red River Gorge can tell you something about the banjo pickin’ Ledford girl who left Red River in the 1930s and became a big star on country music radio. |
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To homesick Southerners gone north for employment and to rural folk back home, the broadcast performances of Lily May Ledford represented the culture of the Appalachian Mountains. Her astonishing instrumental talent, the traditional songs she presented, her old-fashioned speech and guileless personality endeared her to mountain listeners as part of their familiar world and made urban fans take notice of the traditions of the Kentucky hills. With her joyous fiddle and clawhammered banjo, Lily May was an Appalachian ambassador.
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Within a year Lily May was tapped to lead country music radio’s first all-female band. With her sister, Rosie Ledford, Esther “Violet” Kohler and Evelyn “Daisy” Lang, she formed the Coon Creek Girls and delighted audiences of the Renfro Valley Barn Dance program with their lively mountain tunes and songs. In 1939 the quartet was invited to play at the Roosevelt White House in a gala evening of American music for the visiting King and Queen of England. |
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For three decades Lily May entertained with the Coon Creek Girls onstage and over the airwaves. The band existed in several versions, including Lily May, Rosie and their little sister Minnie “Black Eyed Susan” as a trio. |
After a period of retirement, she embarked on a second career as a soloist, bringing mountain music and spellbinding tales of her life and home country to a new audience of folk music enthusiasts. In 1985 she received the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship Award. |
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That year her life ended, but her music and inspiration live on in the hearts of those fans to whom she brought pride and pleasure and in the work of many younger musicians who learned from her. |
