Hillbilly Heaven, Population: One More

 

"Mountain Music Makers" on WJHL-TV 1953

Bonnie Lou died the other day.

If you grew up in east Tennessee in the fifties or sixties, you probably didn’t even know she had a last name. She was just “Bonnie Lou” of “Bonnie Lou and Buster.”

Bonnie Lou and Buster were probably the most famous couple in the Tri-Cities back then. I can’t think of any more famous pair.

They had a nightly TV show on WJHL-TV in Johnson City before most people even had a TV. In fact when WJHL signed on in October of 1953 the station’s very first program was “Mountain Music Makers,” which starred Bonnie Lou, Buster, Bonnie Lou’s brother Lloyd “Ding Dong” Bell and Homer Harris, the 7 Foot Tall Smilin’ Cowboy.

When I got the note from my friend Gary Chesney that Bonnie Lou had passed away, I immediately started singing to myself:

 I love mountain music,

Good old mountain music,

Played by a real hillbilly band.

 

Give me rural rhythm,

Let me sway right with 'em ,

I think the melodies are grand.

 

I’ve heard Hawaiians play

In the land of the Wicki-Wacki,

But I must say:

They can’t beat “Turkey in the Straw,” by cracky!

 

I love mountain music,

Good old mountain music,

Played by a real hillbilly band.

 

That was the “Mountain Music Makers” theme that kicked off every TV show.

My favorite part was the third verse.

You could hear Bonnie Lou’s voice above the others, especially her mountain pronunciation of “HI-waiian.”

I loved that lyric: “I’ve heard HI-waiians play in the land of wicky-wacky.”

I thought it was hilarious. Of course I was only six years old.

I don’t remember if I was watching the night WJHL signed on. We didn’t have a TV yet. But our next door neighbors, the Shankels, did and I went over many afternoons before Johnson City came on the air to watch “The Big Top” on Charlotte’s WBTV. Walter Shankel had erected a 20-foot-high antenna that would bring in that distant signal. There were some areas of Kingsport that were on higher ground or had a better line of sight that could get Charlotte without a tall tower of an antenna.

When we finally did get a TV, the next year, we watched Johnson City all the time. We didn’t have a tall antenna so WJHL was the only station we could get.

And Bonnie Lou and Buster were as familiar as our neighbors, they were on TV so much: every night for half an hour.

I wasn’t a fan of hillbilly music – I wasn’t a fan of any music at age 6 – but I was a fan of TV and I thought Buster’s comic alter ego, Humphammer, was one of the funniest people on TV.

Of course with only one station, and my 8 p.m. bedtime, there wasn’t much competition.

Bonnie Lou and Buster were on WJHL for nine years, until pulling up stakes in 1962 and heading for the greener pastures of Knoxville, where they were sponsored by Jim Walter Homes. (In Tri-Cities their sponsor was Hayes and Reynolds, a furniture store that I never visited but always wanted to, just because of Bonnie Lou. I can still hear her distinctive pronunciation of Hayes and Reynolds when she did the commercials.)

 

The Mountain Music Makers touring company: Guy Peeler on steel guitar, kneeling, Benny Simms, Bonnie Lou Moore. Back row: Alfred Pierce, Homer Harris, Lloyd Bell, Buster Moore.

Bonnie Lou’s passing got me to digging around in the archives. For someone who was so familiar to me as a kid, I knew very little about her.

Bonnie Lou was born Margaret Louise Bell in 1927 in South Carolina. Her family soon moved to Mills River, North Carolina, just outside Asheville.

She was singing in mountain music festivals with her brother Lloyd before either had graduated high school.

When she did graduate, she immediately married a mountain music maker from Newport, Tennessee via way of WNOX radio in Knoxville, Hubert “Buster” Moore, who was advertised as “Bashful Buster, the Wizard of the Five String Banjo.”

That was 1945 and Hubert was recently back from service.

She was 18 and he was almost 26.

Buster may not have been the most handsome performer on WNOX but he was certain to be a good provider. In the 1940 census he listed his annual income as $5,000. The average annual income in the U.S. that year was $1,368. (He could afford a nice car, too; in 1935 he reported to the Knoxville police  that someone had stolen his blue Pontiac roadster.)

For the first year of their marriage they performed as “Buster Moore and Margaret.”

But by summer 1946 they were performing daily on the Tobacco Network Jamboree radio program out of Raleigh that was headlined by Lonnie Glosson and His Railroad Playboys and featured “Buster Moore, Tennessee Blues Singer, Bonnie Lou, Kansas Kitty, Lloyd Bell and Panhandle Pete.”

Not quite “Bonnie Lou and Buster” but Margaret was now Bonnie Lou – Louise was her middle name and Bonnie was the name of Buster’s recently deceased mother.

The first mention I can find of “Bonnie Lou and Buster” is a January 1948 performance at the Lyric Theatre in Erwin, Tennessee. They were performing on a bill with the Cornel Wilde movie “Centennial Summer.”

By the end of 1948 they were performing on WNOX’s “Midday Merry-Go-Round” as “Bonnie Lou and Buster” and using Knoxville as a base for playing shows in Kentucky, North Carolina and East Tennessee.

In 1952 they migrated to Bristol to perform with WCYB radio’s Tennessee Hill-Billy Hay-Ride.

And on October 6, 1953 the “Bonnie Lou and Buster” show debuted on WJHL radio, sponsored by Courtesy Motors, and clearly a precursor to the TV show that would premiere in three weeks.

And that’s how Bonnie Lou (and Buster) entered my life, by cracky.