Lily May Ledford
| Lily May Ledford | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Lily May Ledford |
| Also known as | Lily May Pennington (married name) |
| Born |
March 17, 1917 Powell County, Kentucky, United States |
| Died | July 14, 1985 (aged 68) Lexington, Kentucky, United States |
| Genres | Appalachian folk |
| Instruments | Banjo, fiddle |
| Years active | c. 1937–1957, 1968–1983 |
| Labels | Greenhays, June Appal |
| Associated acts | Coon Creek Girls |
Lily May Ledford (March 17, 1917 – July 14, 1985) was an American clawhammer banjo and fiddle player. After gaining regional radio fame in the 1940s and 1950s as head of the Coon Creek Girls— one of the first all-female string bands to appear on radio— Ledford went on to gain national renown as a solo artist during the American folk music revival of the 1960s. In 1985, she was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship.
Ledford was born along the banks of the Red River in rural Powell County, Kentucky in 1917. She was the seventh of fourteen children born to tenant farmer Daw White Ledford and wife Stella May Tackett. Her father taught her to play banjo at a young age, and by age 12 she had learned to play the fiddle. Lily loved the traditional dance tunes, and she often had to sneak off to play at area dances, as her mother considered this type of music to be "old drunkard songs."
In 1936, Ledford won a music competition at Mount Vernon, Kentucky, and the following year made her radio debut on WLS Chicago's National Barn Dance. Shortly after this appearance, she was recruited by John Lair for his new radio program, Renfro Valley Barn Dance, which was initially broadcast from Cincinnati and later moved to Mount Vernon. Ledford and Lair formed the Coon Creek Girls (Lair provided the band's name, even though there was no such place as Coon Creek, as it was typical for early country music producers to give bands colorful rural-sounding names). The Coon Creek Girls originally consisted of Ledford on banjo and vocals, Ledford's sister Rosie on guitar, Evelyn Daisy Lange on bass, and Esther Violet Koehler on mandolin. Lange and Koehler left in 1939, and were replaced by Ledford's sister, Minnie. The group performed at the White House in 1939 for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his guests, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The group made regular appearances on Renfro Valley Barn Dance until disbanding in 1957.
...
Wikipedia