Trouble Ahead · Philadelphia Lawyer

Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper were a husband-and-wife duo from Harman, West Virginia, who had performed together since the late 1930s and built a following through radio work on stations throughout the South and mid-Atlantic region before joining the Grand Ole Opry in 1957. Wilma Lee Cooper's voice was one of the most distinctively traditional in country music — a full, mountain-rooted soprano with a directness and power that set her apart from the smoother vocal styles that were becoming dominant in Nashville during the same period. Stoney Cooper played fiddle and provided harmonies, and the duo maintained a traditional sound that connected them to the older strains of mountain music even as they worked within the country music industry's commercial structures.

They recorded for Columbia before moving to Hickory Records, and their Hickory work in the 1960s continued the artistic approach that had characterized their Columbia output. "Trouble Ahead" / "Philadelphia Lawyer" (Hickory 45-1179), released in 1962, is representative of the Hickory period — material that balanced original recordings with selections from the traditional repertoire. "Philadelphia Lawyer," a Woody Guthrie composition that had circulated widely in country and western performance, was a recognizable piece by the early 1960s, and the Coopers' version drew on the song's established currency.

Hickory Records, a Nashville-based label associated with Acuff-Rose Publications, provided a commercial home for artists like the Coopers who occupied a space between the mainstream Nashville sound and the more explicitly traditional bluegrass and old-time world. Wilma Lee Cooper continued performing after Stoney's death in 1977, maintaining a connection to traditional country and mountain music through subsequent decades.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.