Cousin Emmy
Best known for
Songwriter
Cousin Emmy — Cynthia May Carver of Monroe County, Kentucky — was a pioneering solo woman in early country music: a five-string banjo and fiddle player who won the National Old-time Fiddlers’ Contest in 1935 and whose song “Ruby, Are You Mad?” became a bluegrass standard after the Osborne Brothers cut it in 1956.
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- Born Cynthia May Carver on March 14, 1903, in the village of Lamb, Monroe County, Kentucky, to a sharecropping family.
- Both parents were musical: father Henry was a fiddler, mother Molly played banjo and sang the old songs.
- Began performing as a child, playing five-string banjo with two Carver cousins on Kansas City station WHB.
- Was featured in 1935 on WHAS Louisville with Frankie Moore’s Log Cabin Boys.
- Won the National Old-time Fiddlers’ Contest in 1935 — the first woman to take the title.
- Built a large personal-appearance and radio career through the 1940s and 50s.
- Influenced the playing of Grandpa Jones, who learned banjo techniques directly from her.
- Wrote “Ruby, Are You Mad?,” which the Osborne Brothers turned into a bluegrass standard.
- Appeared in the films Swing in the Saddle and The Second Greatest Sex.
- Found a new audience on the 1960s folk-revival circuit, recording with the New Lost City Ramblers.
- Died April 11, 1980, in Sherman Oaks, California.
