Molly O'Day (singer)

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For the actress of the same name, see Molly O'Day.

Molly O'Day
Birth name Lois LaVerne Williamson
Also known as Dixie Lee
Born July 9, 1923
Origin Pike County, Kentucky, USA
Died December 5, 1987 (aged 64)
Genre(s) Country
Occupation(s) Country artist
Instrument(s) Guitar, banjo
Years active 1940s – 1950s
Notable instrument(s)
Guitar, banjo

Molly O'Day (July 9, 1923 – December 5, 1987) was an American country music vocalist who had some degree of fame and commercial success in the late 1940s. Despite her short recording career; 5 years, she became a legend in her own lifetime.

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[edit] Early life

Lois LaVerne Williamson was born on a farm in Pike County, Kentucky, as the daughter of Joseph and Hester Williamson. Her father Joseph supported the family as a coalminer. Neither of her parents played music but Lois got together with her two brothers, Cecil and Joe, to practice singing and playing. Lois and her two brothers, who called themselves Skeets and Duke, began performing at local dances. In 1939 Skeets was hired to perform in a radio band: Ervin Staggs and His Radio Ramblers at WCHS, Charleston, West Virginia. One of the the more famous members of the group was Johnnie Bailes. That same year Molly also joined the Radio Ramblers as a vocalist under the pseudonym Mountain Fern. She also worked with a banjoist called Murphy McClees and changed her name to Dixie Lee. Within a couple of months, she and her two brothers quit and moved to Williamson, West Virginia, to perform at a local radio station. In 1940 Lois and her two brothers moved to Beckley, West Virginia, to join the Happy Valley Boys led by Johnnie Bailes. The band didn't make much money so it disintegrated in the fall of 1940.

[edit] Professional career

Lois, now unemployed, applied for the position as a vocalist in the band Lynn Davis and His Forty-Niners, who had performed on WHIS in Bluefield, West Virginia for the past four years. A few months later, on April 5, 1941, Lynn Davis and Lois Williamson were married. The Forty-Niners appeared on several locations in the southeast and during one gig in Birmingham, Alabama, Hank Williams performed with the group. In 1941 Lois changed her name to Molly O'Day since there already existed another singer named Dixie Lee. After a couple of years, in 1945, Lynn decided to change the band's name to the Cumberland Mountain Folks. Since the World War II had come to an end, people was eagerly looking for entertainment and the new band became a hot act. In the summer of 1946, the head of Acuff-Rose, Fred Rose heard Molly sing Tramp on the Street. He almost immediately arranged for her a recording contract with Columbia Records. Molly O'Day & The Cumberland Mountain Folks made their first recordings on December 16, 1946. On these first recordings, bluegrass legend Mac Wiseman appeared on bass. During her first years as a recording artist Molly O'Day's popularity increased but she started to have second doubts about her life's choice. By 1951 she had made her last recording session for Columbia Records.

[edit] Later years

Although Molly O'Day made some home recordings för Bob Mooney's Rem label and GRS Records in the 1960s, she preferred to sing in churches and do evangelistic work. Both the Smithsonian Institute and Ralph Stanley tried without success to get her back to the stage. In February 1974, Molly and Lynn started a program on a Christian radio station in Huntingdon featuring gospel recordings. In the mid-eighties she had cancer and her health began to deteriorate. She died on December 5, 1987.

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