Email Bill Meyer, Find Podcasts on BillMeyerShow.com
Bill Meyer’s Facebook page: www.Facebook.com/BillMeyerShow
KLAMATH RIVER WATER ANALYSIS at Happy Camp, CA – This just in from GP Water Lab.
Read it here: HappyCampSample
_______________________________________________
Monday 10-21-24 Bill Meyer Show Guest Information
(Podcasts on www.BillMeyerShow.com)
6:30 How much does illegal immigration cost Oregon?? Joey Chester, Communications Manager for the Federation for American Immigration Reform – www.FairUs.org
7:10 Greg Roberts – www.RogueWeather.com with today’s Preparation Report regarding “The Big One” earthquake.
.
7:35 Phoenix Mayor Terry Baker – conversation about the left’s attack on taking over City Government. Terry explores that story.
8:10 Dr. Dennis Powers – www.DennisPowersBooks.com with today’s “Where Past Meets Present”.
The Maddox Brothers and Rose
By Dennis Powers
Riding the rails during the Depression days of 1933, the Maddox children (Cal, Henry, Fred, Don, Cliff, and Rose) left Alabama with their parents to settle in Modesto, California. Toiling from dawn to dusk, eating and sleeping in the fields, the family worked as “fruit tramps” in picking fruits and vegetables in the San Joaquin Valley and from Washington to Arizona.
To earn extra money, the musical family began playing for local dances with 12-year-old Rose in 1937 providing the vocals, even in honky-tonks. Two years later at the Centennial Sacramento State Fair, they entered a hillbilly band competition with a risqué, rocking and rhythmic, “Sally Let Your Bangs Hang Down.” They then officially were voted as and became California’s best hillbilly band. By 1941 they were popular due to being featured on far-reaching KFBK-Sacramento radio; however, they disbanded when the brothers were drafted or worked in the war effort.
After World War II, the group returned in 1946 as “Maddox Brothers & Rose”, and their showy stage dress gave them the title “the most colorful hillbilly band in America.” When Cliff died in 1949, Henry replaced him to join the other Maddox brothers (Fred, Cal, and Don) in the band. In the early 1950s, they performed on the Las Vegas strip and Grand Ole Opry along with regular appearances on the “Louisiana Hayride,” having recorded for Four Star Records before moving to Columbia Records. Among their successes were Rose’s recordings of the Woody Guthrie song “The Philadelphia Lawyer,” “The Tramp on the Street,” and “Whoa, Sailor.”
In early days, songs weren’t called country or Western, but instead hillbilly music. In the 1950’s, when hillbilly was losing its prominence, this transformed into pop country and rockabilly—and the Maddox Brothers and Rose were at the leading edge with the slapped bass that Fred Maddox developed. (Others believe that the group was one of the first rockabilly groups, if not the first.) This music had hillbilly vocals and instrumentation with a boogie-bass base.
The group was hot and known for its lively antics on stage with rakish costumes and a comedic approach by Don Maddox; Fred’s slapping bass style helped drive this broad change in popular music. The band disbanded in 1956 due to a changing music scene and Rose wanting to be out on her own with brother Cal on the guitar.
Don Maddox, then 34-years old, needed to find work to pay his bills and decided that he wanted to be a cowboy or range rider. He enrolled at an agricultural college in the San Fernando Valley, even though he had never attended high school. With that education, he began searching in trade magazines for a cattle ranch and saw one advertised in Ashland, Oregon, for $35,000 with 300-acres, some irrigated, and a house. Although this took his last money, Don Maddox bought it.
Rose Maddox continued singing with solo hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s as “Sing a Little Song of Heartache,” “Gambler’s Love,” “Kissing My Pillow,” and “Bluebird, Let Me Tag Along.” In the early 1980s, she recorded an album of gospel music, “A Beautiful Bouquet,” in memory of her son, Donnie, who had recently passed away. In 1996, her CD of “$35 and a Dream” received a Grammy nomination.
Don Maddox was the one, however, who became the bedrock of the Maddox family. When Rose and Cal returned, Don sold them 5 acres of his Ashland ranch to build a house on. They and their mother lived there, later joined by Rose’s son, his wife, and children. When Rose fell into poor health and hard financial times, Don bought the house back to help pay the bills and gave her a life estate to live there. When Henry ran into bad times and fell ill, he moved in with Rose.
When Rose died in 1998, all of the original Maddox family had passed away but for Don. Fred Maddox’s bass is on display at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, as the exhibitors believe he might have hit the first note of rock and roll on it. At the Country Music Hall of Fame, an entire section is dedicated to the group as part of the Bakersfield Sound Exhibit.
Later, Don Maddox was “rediscovered” as an artist. With Merle Haggard, Marty Stuart, and “Little” Jimmy Dickens, he was one of the headliners at the 2012 Muddy Roots Festival in Cookeville, Tennessee. As the 90-year-old Maddox said in an interview: “I’ve been working the place for fifty-four years, and nobody recognized me as a famous country music singer–until now.” And he was continuing to play the fiddle and sing in a band with friends throughout the Medford/Ashland area.
The last surviving member of the “greatly influential developer of country music, rockabilly, and rock and roll band,” Don Maddox died on September 12, 2021 at 98 years-old. An Ashland cattle rancher, influential country music singer—and standout person.
Sources: Modesto Radio Museum—Jeff Bernard, “Country Music’s Rose Maddox dies at 71,” Associated Press, April 15, 1998; Saving County Music.com, “Interview: Don Maddox of Maddox Brothers & Rose,” Sept. 23, 2012, at Interview Don Maddox (With Images); interviews with those who knew and performed with him, along with talking to him personally.
8:35 Josephine County Commissioner John West – Under Recall Threat and what is this about the Grants Pass Tribune accusations?