Rose Lee Maphis

During the 1950s and 1960s, Joe and Rose Lee Maphis -- "Mr. and Mrs. Country Music" -- ranked as one of show business' most successful husband-and-wife duos, thanks largely to Joe's distinctive, highly influential brand of guitar picking. While Otis Wilson Maphis was born on May 12, 1921, in Suffolk, VA, Rose Lee Schetrompf was born over a year later on December 29, 1922, in Baltimore, MD. Both became active in music at a young age: after playing guitar in a group with his family's group, the Railsplitters, at local square dances, in 1938 Joe became a full-time musician, and not long after joined Sunshine Sue (Workman)'s backing outfit, the Rangers, in Cincinnati, OH. With the group, he began to perfect his unique approach to playing, which favored hyperkinetic finger-picked melody lines over more basic chord accompaniment. Rose Lee, meanwhile, began singing on local radio in Hagerstown, VA, at the age of 15 as a member of the girl group the Saddle Sweethearts and soon graduated to appearances in large markets like Baltimore and St. Louis. After serving in World War II, Joe returned to Virginia, where he briefly joined Sunshine Sue's radio jamboree, The Old Dominion Barn Dance, which also featured young singer Rose Lee Schetrompf. However, Maphis soon departed for Chicago; when he came back to Virginia in 1947, he took up the electric guitar and rejoined the radio program. He and Rose Lee soon began performing together on the air and on the road; however, in 1951 Merle Travis convinced Joe to move to California to work in television, and only after Rose followed a year later did the couple finally wed. In 1953, the duo cut their first sides, among them the self-penned "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)," which has since become a honky tonk standard....