The Cumberland Ridge Runners

This group was highly successful for several years with a stage show and series of radio broadcasts that combined top-flight musicianship with hillbilly dressing up and hamming, although the players themselves certainly all had authentically rural backgrounds. Guitarist Karl Davis and mandolinist Hartford Taylor were a West Virginia duo act that most often pretended to be brothers, seeing as how most such acts in the old-time field were performing siblings. They made quite a few recordings as a duo under the name of Karl and Harty, and also performed under the name of the Renfro Valley Boys. An impressario named John Lair, who also blew a bit of jug and harmonica, formed the first and most famous edition of the Cumberland Ridge Runners, by combining Davis and Taylor with banjo and guitar player Hugh Cross and a fiddler named Homer Miller who was known for off-the-wall antics. Cross was already a well-established country crooner and collaborator on the earliest recordings of songs such as "Red River Valley" and "Wabash Cannonball." Lair created a hillbilly image for the outfit, dressing them all in checked shirts, straw or cowboy hats, cowboy boots, overalls, and so forth. A famous photograph of them shows them in front of what looks like a rustic log cabin, but was actually a replica of Fort Dearborn created for the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The band was the main hillbilly act at this event, and also was the first such group to perform regularly on the National Barn Dance presented by Chicago's radio station WLS. The group became something of a training ground for up and coming country performers. A red-haired vocalist and bassist named Clyde Foley was hired to take part in comical sketches with Miller as well as play music; he soon changed his name to Red Foley and...