Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper was recorded at Starday Studios in Nashville on 6, 7 and 8 April 1976 and released by Rounder later that year (Rounder 0066). It came late in the couple’s long partnership. From 1947 they spent a decade on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia, and then some twenty years on the Grand Ole Opry roster. By the 1970s Stoney’s health was failing, and Wilma Lee generally led their band, the Clinch Mountain Clan. Stoney had a series of heart attacks from 1973 onward and died in a Nashville hospital on 22 March 1977.
Wilma Lee sings lead and plays guitar. Stoney takes the lead on one song, Hugh Cross’s “Don’t Make Me Go to Bed and I’ll Be Good.” The band is Bill Carver on dobro and mandolin, Butch Robins on banjo and guitar, Jerry Shook on guitar, Jim Brock Jr. on bass and Glen Davis on drums. L. E. White and the Coopers’ daughter, Carol Lee, sing harmony; at the time she was leading her own backing group on the Opry, the Carol Lee Singers.
The ten songs lean on older material. Four are traditional: “Poor Ellen Smith,” “The Hills of Roane County,” “Heaven Express” and “Prisoner at the Bar.” Albert E. Brumley wrote “I’m a Private in the Army of the Lord” and Warren Caplinger “Star-Lit Heaven.” “Where Is America Going?” was also issued as a Rounder single (4510). Other songs probably cut at the same April sessions, among them “Curly Headed Baby” and “Nobody’s Darling but Mine,” came out in 1982 on a Wilma Lee Cooper album, Rounder 0143. The album’s digital edition adds two of them, “Nobody’s Darling but Mine” and “Bury Me Beneath the Willow.”
Tracklist
- 1 Poor Ellen Smith alt version 2:16
- 2 I'm A Private In The Army Of The Lord 3:35
- 3 The Hills Of Roane County 5:02
- 4 Don't Make Me Go To Bed And I'll Be Good 5:33
- 5 He Will Set Your Fields On Fire alt version 3:06
- 6 Where Is America Going? 2:51
- 7 Star-Lit Heaven 5:50
- 8 Heaven Express 2:38
- 9 I’m Just Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail alt version 2:15
- 10 Prisoner At The Bar 4:10
- 11 Nobody's Darling But Mine 4:54
- 12 Bury Me Beneath the Willow alt version 2:43
