The Cox Family

For years the family toured Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas from their home in northwestern Louisiana. Their first album, I Shall Not Be Moved, came out on the Wilcox label in 1978, with Willard on fiddle, Evelyn on lead guitar and lead vocals, Sidney on banjo, Lynn on bass and Suzanne singing tenor, and with their mother, Marie, adding alto vocals. Heartaches Along the Horizon followed on Wilcox in 1987, with Suzanne now on mandolin and Sidney on Dobro as well as banjo.

Krauss produced and arranged Everybody’s Reaching Out for Someone (Rounder, 1993), and the following year she and Union Station recorded the gospel album I Know Who Holds Tomorrow (Rounder, 1994) with the family; it won the Grammy for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album in 1995. Their next album, Beyond the City (Rounder, 1995), also produced by Krauss, was nominated for a Grammy. The family then moved to Asylum for Just When We’re Thinking It’s Over (1996), again with Krauss producing, and issued a version of Del Shannon’s “Runaway” as a single. The next year they sang the Carter Family’s “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and “Sweeter Than the Flowers” on the soundtrack of the film Traveller.

Their arrangement of “I Am Weary (Let Me Rest)” was included on the soundtrack of the Coen brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and Willard had a small acting part in the film; the family also appeared in Down From the Mountain, the concert film made from the soundtrack’s music. Shortly after the soundtrack was finished in 2000, Willard and Marie were badly hurt in a road accident and the band went on hiatus, coming back the next year for a limited number of dates. The family built a recording studio in their home, and their last album, Gone Like the Cotton (Rounder, 2015), was completed, with Krauss producing, from tracks begun as much as seventeen years before, without Willard’s participation.

Willard Cox died in November 2019, aged 82, and Evelyn Cox Hobbs died at her home in Vivian, Louisiana, on 5 May 2026, aged 66. After the band retired, Sidney Cox and his daughters revived the Cox Family name and much of its repertoire.