The Tennessee Jamboree: Local Radio, the Barn Dance, and Cultural Life in Appalachian East Tennessee
Bradley Hanson, Brown University
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Rural Radio | The Barn Dance Genre | The Barn Dance in East Tennessee | LaFollette | WLAF | Tennessee Jamboree | Original Broadcast, Part 1: Music | Original Broadcast, Part 2: Advertising and Banter |
"Our time has come and gone" | Notes | Recommended Resources
"Our time has come and gone" | Notes | Recommended Resources
Tennessee Jamboree:
From its earliest days in 1953, WLAF followed the models established by the national and regional stations of broadcasting live country music on Saturday nights. Unlike the news reports, sporting events, swap shops, and coverage of local government, the Saturday night programming transported listeners to an imaginary place created by talented LaFollette-area musicans and singers. The LaFollette country music variety show served as a crafted site for shaping and reinforcing "down home" values. That first Saturday night's Jamboree likely featured Monroe Queener, a well-known local dobro player with experience on WROL in Knoxville's Cas Walker show, and Ray Bolton, about whom we know little. Perhaps from the start, announcer Denny Walker began producing and hosting the Saturday night programs. Walker, a LaFollette native, had gained broadcasting and engineering experience in WWII. After helping launch WJJM in Lewisburg, Tennessee, in 1947, (where he had developed a barn dance program) he worked as an announcer and disc jockey at upstart WLAF. Under Walker's guidance, the Queener and Bolton program became a new show anchored by bluegrass band, the Blue Valley Boys.
Lead by guitarist Robert Stephens, this band included Arnold McNeely, Charlie Powers, and Fred Haggard, young men in their early 20s who had all grown up in Whitman Hollow outside LaFollette. According to Stephens, the band formed in response to a contest sponsored by the LaFollette Southern States Co-op Farm Store — the winning prize consisting of a trip to Bristol, Tennessee, for the opportunity to make a demo recording. Garnering the attention of Walker, the Blue Valley Boys landed the Saturday night spot on WLAF. Recorded in the station's basement, the show was likely the first to carry the Tennessee Jamboree name. The near-synonymous relationship between the Jamboree and the Blue Valley Boys was one that would last nearly twenty-five years.
Lead by guitarist Robert Stephens, this band included Arnold McNeely, Charlie Powers, and Fred Haggard, young men in their early 20s who had all grown up in Whitman Hollow outside LaFollette. According to Stephens, the band formed in response to a contest sponsored by the LaFollette Southern States Co-op Farm Store — the winning prize consisting of a trip to Bristol, Tennessee, for the opportunity to make a demo recording. Garnering the attention of Walker, the Blue Valley Boys landed the Saturday night spot on WLAF. Recorded in the station's basement, the show was likely the first to carry the Tennessee Jamboree name. The near-synonymous relationship between the Jamboree and the Blue Valley Boys was one that would last nearly twenty-five years.
Listen to a clip from the Tennessee Jamboree: "Oleo." Monroe Queener, dobro, and the Blue Valley Boys, late 1960s (1:51 min).
The collection of L.C. Edwards and the Tennessee State Library and Archive RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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The Tennessee Jamboree steadily gained popularity throughout the fifties, eventually outgrowing the small WLAF studio before moving to LaFollette's high school auditorium, where for the first time it was broadcast in front of a live audience. The lineup of the Blue Valley Boys experienced the first of several shakeups. By the late fifties, the group included local LaFollette musicians Henry Horne, Billy Ray Burge, Carlos Henderson, Monroe Queener, and Charlie Collins.
Queener was well-known throughout East Tennessee for his influential bluegrass
dobro style. Collins played fiddle in several regional bands, including the
popular Pinnacle Mountain Boys of nearby Claiborne County. Robert Stephens, the
original Blue Valley Boy, remained with the band and, at the urging of host
Walker, took the role of group comedian. His simpleton persona "Slap Happy Jake" proved wildly popular and, with his stereotyped rural antics and exaggerated face makeup, linked the Jamboree to the legacy of medicine and minstrel show.
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Tennessee Jamboree, Blue
Valley Boys,
LaFollette, Tennessee, early 1960s. |
The show remained at LaFollette High into the early 60s and became "the place to be" for local LaFollette musicians. A changing assortment of talented pickers and singers joined the Blue Valley Boys on the Jamboree stage, including bass player, guitarist, and singer Red Harrison, and fiddler Dean Huddleston — both of whom had played with a southeastern Kentucky band called Pap and the Youngins, an ensemble that also sometimes included Collins and Queener. Collins and Harrison, as well as several other musicians later to join the Blue Valley Boys, also worked for what was locally dubbed the Big Shirt Factory, a major employer in the LaFollette area.
Listen to a clip from the Tennessee Jamboree: Skit with Slap Happy Cousin Jake and Elmer Longmire, 1965 (4:51 min).
The collection of Doris Queener and the Tennessee State Library and Archives RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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Tennessee Jamboree, Blue
Valley Boys,
LaFollette, Tennessee, mid-1960s.
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The most important addition to the Jamboree family during the early 60s was another Campbell County musician and Big Shirt Factory employee, Elmer Longmire, recruited by the Blue Valley Boys to not only take over the Jamboree, but also to manage and lead the band. Whether the Jamboree had fallen temporally on hard times, or perhaps had become too complicated to be produced informally from week to week is not clear. At around this time the multi-talented Longmire was also hired as station manager of WLAF, making him the natural successor to Denny Walker as the overseer and emcee of the Jamboree. In the recollections of Jamboree musicians, no person garners more praise and admiration than Longmire. War veteran, church leader, and family man, Longmire was revered in LaFollette.
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Under Longmire's guidance the Tennessee Jamboree entered its peak period in the mid- to late 60s. After several years at LaFollette High, the program moved to the American Legion building where it attracted enthusiastic Saturday night audiences. The Blue Valley Boys personnel continued to change before settling into a more stable roster. The mid-60s version, often considered the classic lineup, included Longmire as emcee and rhythm guitarist; Red Harrison, bass and guitar; Robert Stephens, as comedian and alternating with Harrison on bass and guitar; Curt Caldwell, also alternating on guitar and bass; Dean Huddleston, fiddle; newcomer Carl Stump from Harriman, Tennessee, on mandolin; Monroe Queener, dobro; Carlos Henderson, banjo. After Henderson's death, L.C Edwards of LaFollette joined on banjo. All the Blue Valley Boys took turns on lead and backing vocals, with Longmire, Huddleston, and Stump forming an oft-featured trio. |
Regular guest stars included Lois Johnson and Kirk Hansard, popular performers on Knoxville's Tennessee Barn Dance; Jim Fagan, a songwriter from nearby Clinton, Tennessee; and former Blue Valley Boy Charlie Collins and his whiz kid banjo protégé Larry McNeely, both members of another popular east Tennessee band, the Pinnacle Mountain Boys, and subsequently of Roy Acuff's Smokey Mountain Boys on the Grand Ole Opry.
Listen to a clip from the Tennessee Jamboree: "A Boy Like You." Lois Johnson, 1965 (2:52 min).
The collection of Doris Queener and the Tennessee State Library and Archives RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
Over the years, the Jamboree featured regular "girl singers," sometimes causing Longmire to introduce the band as the Blue Valley Boys and Girls: Frances Boshears, Irene Lloyd and her daughter Sharon, Mary Madison, and Janice Patty. Barbara Sanders of LaFollette, known as "Little Barb" due to her diminutive size, served the longest of the girl singers, her boisterous voice and personality, as well as impromptu dance numbers with Longmire, making her one of the most popular Jamboree performers. Little Barb notwithstanding, the Jamboree was dominated by its male membership and by the traditional values of a patriarchal community. Though the "girl singers" were sometimes given prime spots within the program, none ever went beyond singing a couple of songs and then leaving the stage. No woman was ever an emcee or a featured instrumentalist. The Jamboree was markedly traditional, with the Boys always doing the musical "heavy lifting." |
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Listen to a clip from the Tennessee Jamboree: "Your Squaw is on the Warpath Tonight." Little Barb Sanders, 1969 (2:11 min).
The collection of Fred Longmire and the Tennessee State Library and Archives RealMedia | Windows Media | QuickTime |
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Longmire, the Blue Valley Boys, Little Barb and the other "girl singers," and the regular guest stars, worked to make the Jamboree the aural "image" of a tight knit, family-friendly, and good-time-for-all local space. Not surprisingly, Longmire often welcomed the musician's children onto the stage to perform, all joining the Jamboree's country music community of the airwaves. In the late 60s, Longmire welcomed his wife Sara Miller and nephew Fred Longmire to the show. Hometown sponsors eagerly had their names and products pitched alongside LaFollette's talented pickers and singers. Wherever there was a parade, political rally, or summer concert in the park, you'd find the Blue Valley Boys and the Jamboree family.
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Essay Sections:
Introduction | Rural Radio | The Barn Dance Genre | The Barn Dance in East Tennessee | LaFollette | WLAF | Tennessee Jamboree | Original Broadcast, Part 1: Music | Original Broadcast, Part 2: Advertising and Banter |
"Our time has come and gone" | Notes | Recommended Resources
"Our time has come and gone" | Notes | Recommended Resources
