The Fannin County Historical Commission has become one of the most active commissions in Northeast Texas. During the month of March this year, members posted brief articles for Women’s History Day. Here’s an interesting piece I wrote several years ago about one of the most famous women in Fannin County.
During the Great Depression, and even earlier, it was common for rural families to form musical groups to entertain themselves and their neighbors. Some were invited to perform in larger towns, especially in Shreveport, Louisiana. With the departure of young men to the warfront in the 1940s, such groups were less numerous. But after the war, the radio program “Louisiana Hayride” led the way in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana to recruit homegrown talent. Every Saturday night families sat by the radio to listen to the latest and greatest new singers, fiddlers, and band members perform in Shreveport. Soon the sponsors of the Hayride began a mobile show that traveled during the week to outlying audiences. Auditoriums throughout Northeast Texas and the Dallas Sportatorium became some of the most popular venues. Unknowns to the music world were first presented on the traveling version of The Louisiana Hayride before appearing on radio from Shreveport. Names like Elvis Presley performed throughout the region.
The Louisiana Hayride was by no means the only show on the road. In 1946-1947 many country shows performed in towns and small cities around Northeast Texas promoted by “Pappy” Hal Horton and “Cousin” Harrell Goodman, announcers for KRLD radio station in Dallas. On one of their show at the Greenville Municipal Auditorium, the two men contrived to award the National Champion Woman Fiddler and disproved the old adage that no woman could play a fiddle well. The winner was twenty-three year old Ruby Allmond from Bailey, Texas.
Ruby became lead fiddler in three groups who performed regularly with Horton and Goodman, as well as the Greenville production known as the East Texas Barn Dance. The latter was the creation of Earl Fletcher and Jimmy Jones, general manager and program director, respectively, of radio station KGVL in Greenville. Ruby often remarked to friends that her favorite venue was the Greenville Municipal Auditorium. She performed there with the likes of Chet Atkins, Joe Shelton and is Sunshine Band, and her own band the Ruby Allmond and the Texas Jamboree. At times, she “trio” fiddled with two of American’s finest fiddlers, Howdy Forrester and Georgia “Slim” Rutland. Ruby was truly the National Woman Fiddler.