Grandpa Jones

小簡介
????Grandpa Jones(1913-1998): 路易斯·馬歇爾·瓊斯 （外號：瓊斯?fàn)敔敚荷?913年11月，肯塔基州人。他的父親是個農(nóng)民，他十多歲時全家搬到俄亥俄州，22歲他為電臺演出，并且得到了Grandpa這個外號，從此這名字伴隨了他一生。1947年他來到納什維爾，成為了the Grand Old Opry的一員，1978年他被列入鄉(xiāng)村音樂名人堂，1998年逝世。瓊斯?fàn)敔斒莻€出色的Banjo班卓琴的演奏家，他的嗓音粗獷，帶有濃厚的山地藍(lán)草風(fēng)格，作為杰出的傳統(tǒng)的鄉(xiāng)村音樂表演藝術(shù)家，他的名字永遠(yuǎn)不會被人忘記。
by Bruce Eder
Louis Marshall Grandpa Jones was one person who aged right into his makeup. Like his real appearance, however, his actual background and role in country music were deceptive and more complex than they seem. Beginning in the 1920s, he began attracting attention with his boisterous performing style, old-time banjo performing, and powerful singing, and by the 1940s, with hits like Rattler and Mountain Dew, he began receiving national attention. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1946 and remained there throughout his career; in the 1960s, with hits like T for Texas, he continued making a place for himself on the country charts, and as a regular on Hee Haw since its inception in 1969, he became a television celebrity. But Jones influence went much further than that chain of successes would indicate — he was almost single-handedly responsible for keeping the banjo alive as a country music instrument during the 1930s and 1940s, and in addition to his own work and songs, he was an important associate and collaborator of Merle Travis.
Jones was born in Niagra, KY, and grew up not in the mountains or the countryside, as one would think from his music, but in industrial Ohio and Kentucky, living in factory towns. His father was a fiddle player, and his mother was a ballad singer. He listened to a lot of radio growing up, especially the National Barn Dance out of Chicago, and his strongest influences included old-time country music and gospel songs as well as the music of Jimmie Rodgers, which led him to begin yodeling. Hed made it onto the radio himself by 1929 at the age of 18 as the Young Singer of Old Songs. Later on he moved to Chicago, teamed with Bashful Harmonica Joe, and appeared on the Lum and Abner show. During the mid-30s, he started working with Bradley Kincaid, the man who gave Jones the Grandpa name, a result of his grouchy moods during their early-morning radio broadcasts — Jones thought the name worked and adopted makeup to match. Coupled with his skills as a comedian and raconteur, the image was a natural. It was with Kincaid that Jones career moved to Boston, where their brand of country music proved extremely popular among rural New Englanders.
As a solo act later in the 1930s, Jones had radio shows on numerous stations from West Virginia and Connecticut to Cincinnati, where he sang folk ballads and more old-time country ballads as well as gospel songs. He also learned to play the banjo and made it an integral part of his act at a time when the instrument had all but vanished from country music; it was the combination of Jones old-time repertory and humor that helped to keep the banjo alive as a viable, popular country instrument. Jones later hooked up with Alton and Rabon Delmore and Merle Travis, and played with them throughout World War II as Browns Ferry Four. He and Travis also became the first artists to record for the newly founded King label, under the name of the Shepherd Brothers. Jones own earliest solo records were also done for King during this period, among them Its Raining Here This Morning, Eight More Miles to Louisville, Rattler, and Mountain Dew.
Those singles brought Grandpa Jones to national attention, and he was poised for the next step in his career, a move to Nashville. Before that, however, he married Ramona Riggins, who became not only his wife but his accompanist on fiddle and mandolin. In 1946, he began playing on the Grand Ole Opry and touring with acts such as Lonzo & Oscar and Cowboy Copas. He didnt stay in Nashville too long at first, moving to Lorton, VA, and a radio show in Arlington, and later on the Old Dominion Barn Dance in Richmond. Finally, he returned to Nashville as a regular member of the Opry. Jones recorded with King Records from 1945 until 1952, when he moved to RCA Victor, where he remained for four years, recording both traditional-sounding country and topical songs (Im No Communist).
In 1956, he began a six-year stint on Decca Records, recording a total of 16 songs including the talking-blues country hit The All-American Boy in 1959. Jones moved to Fred Fosters Monument Records in 1962 and had a Top Five country hit the following year with T for Texas. His career during the 1960s continued uninterrupted, and in 1969 he joined the cast of the new country music/comedy showcase Hee Haw, which gave him unprecedented national exposure for the next two decades. By 1978, hed been elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame and, by that time, was taking on the real-life role of elder statesman within the community. He continued recording into the 1980s, although his music is somewhat under-represented today on compact disc, apart from the Monument and Decca sides. In 1984, Jones published his autobiography, Everybodys Grandpa. He died February 19, 1998.