Gladys Stacey
Pseudonym for
Lester Flatt
Musician
Gladys Stacey was the maiden name of Lester Flatt’s wife Gladys Lee Stacey Flatt — used by Lester as a songwriting pen name throughout his career with the Foggy Mountain Boys and the Nashville Grass. The practice followed a mid-century country-music convention of crediting songs to family members for publishing-royalty and tax reasons, a convention that outlasted its original motivations and remains preserved on many Flatt & Scruggs recordings. The songs credited to “Gladys Stacey” were in fact written (solely or co-written) by Lester Flatt.
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- Born Gladys Lee Stacey on July 29, 1915, in White County, Tennessee.
- Married Lester Flatt around 1931–1932, when she was 16 and he was 17; the couple played together as a duo in the Roanoke, Virginia area in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
- Joined Charlie Monroe & His Kentucky Pardners with Lester in 1943, performing under the stage name “Bobbie Jean” while Lester sang tenor and played mandolin.
- Stepped away from public performing in March 1945, when Lester joined Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, and devoted herself to family while Lester’s career took off.
- From September 1972 she was surrogate mother to a 13-year-old Marty Stuart, who had just joined Lester’s Nashville Grass and lived with the Flatts during his first years on the road.
- Died March 31, 2014, at age 98.
- Lester Flatt was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Honor and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1985.