Grandpa Jones

Louis Marshall Jones (October 20, 1913 – February 19, 1998), known professionally as Grandpa Jones, was an American banjo player and "old time" country and gospel music singer. He was inducted as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978. Biography Jones was born in the small farming community of Niagara in Henderson County, Kentucky, the youngest of 10 children in a sharecropper's family. His father was an old-time fiddle player, and his mother was a ballad singer and herself adept on the concertina. His first instrument was guitar. Ramona Riggins, one of several women who began to gain some recognition in a musical form long dominated by men was Grandpa's wife and musical partner of over thirty years. Ramona first started playing the mandolin when she was six or seven years old. Jones spent his teenage years in Akron, Ohio, where he began singing country music tunes on a radio show on WJW. In 1931, Jones joined the Pine Ridge String Band, which provided the musical accompaniment for the Lum and Abner show. By 1935 his pursuit of a musical career took him to WBZ radio in Boston, Massachusetts, where he met musician/songwriter Bradley Kincaid, who gave him the nickname "Grandpa Jones" when he was 22 years old, because of his off-stage grumpiness at early-morning radio shows. Jones liked the name and decided to create a stage persona based around it. Later in life, he lived in Mountain View, Arkansas. In the 1940s he met rising country radio star Cousin Emmy, from whom he learned to play the banjo. Career Performing as Grandpa Jones, he played the guitar or banjo, yodeled, and sang mostly old-time ballads. By 1937, Jones had made his way to West Virginia, where Cousin Emmy taught Jones the art of the clawhammer style of banjo playing, which gave a rough backwoods flavor to his performances. First experience playing music in public came at the age of 11 or thereabouts The music of the WLS Barn Dance in Chicago was a major influence on Louis, as were the Jimmie Rodgers records his sister brought home. In 1942, Jones joined WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was there that he met fellow Kentuckian Merle Travis. In 1943, they made their recording debuts together for Syd Nathan's upstart King Records. Jones was making records under his own name for King by 1944 and had his first hit with "It's Raining Here This Morning." His recording career was put on hold when he enlisted in the United States Army during World War II.