Гранпа Джонс: Жизнь и творчество легенды кантри-музыки

Musical artist (1913–1998)

Louis Marshall Jones (October 20, 1913 – February 19, 1998), known professionally as Grandpa Jones, was an American banjo player and "old time" country and gospel music singer. He was inducted as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978.

Jones was born in the small farming community of Niagara in Henderson County, Kentucky, the youngest of 10 children in a sharecropper's family. His father was an old time fiddle player, and his mother was a ballad singer and herself adept on the concertina. Ramona Riggins, one of several women who began to gain some recognition in a musical form long dominated by men was Grandpa's wife and musical partner of over thirty years. Ramona first started playing the mandolin when she was six or seven years old. First experience playing music in public came at the age of 11 or thereabouts The music of the WLS Barn Dance in Chicago was a major influence on Louis, as were the Jimmie Rodgers records his sister brought home. In 1942, Jones joined WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was there that he met fellow Kentuckian Merle Travis. In 1943, they made their recording debuts together for Syd Nathan's upstart King Records. Jones testified at the trial of the killers; his testimony helped to secure a conviction.

In 1978, Jones was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His autobiography Everybody's Grandpa: Fifty Years Behind the Mike was published in 1984.

In January 1998, Jones suffered two strokes after his second show performance at the Grand Ole Opry. He died at 7 p. m. Central Time on February 19, 1998, at the McKendree Village Home Health Center in Hermitage, Tennessee at age 84. He was buried in the Luton Memorial Methodist Church cemetery in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.

Wolfe, Charles K. (1998). "Grandpa Jones". In The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Paul Kingsbury (editor), New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 269–70.