Wilma Lee Cooper
Musician · 1921–2011 · Valley Head, West Virginia
Best known for
Lead Vocals
Guitar
Wilma Lee Cooper was one of the most powerful and traditional-minded voices in mid-century country music, a fierce Appalachian singer whose driving guitar and unbending mountain style earned her the Smithsonian’s designation as the “First Lady of Bluegrass.” With her husband, fiddler Stoney Cooper, she led the Clinch Mountain Clan through a string of Hickory Records hits, then carried the old-time sound solo on the Grand Ole Opry stage for decades after his death.
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- Born Wilma Leigh Leary on February 7, 1921, in Valley Head, West Virginia, to a coal-mining father and a schoolteacher mother; she reportedly began singing at age five in the family’s gospel group.
- The Leary Family sang gospel songs and traditional ballads, represented West Virginia at the 1938 and 1939 National Folk Festivals in Washington, D.C., and made recordings for the Library of Congress.
- In 1941 she married fiddler and vocalist Dale T. “Stoney” Cooper, who had joined the Leary group as its fiddler; together they formed Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper and the Clinch Mountain Clan.
- The duo built a following on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia, beginning in 1947, and in 1950 Harvard University’s music library called them “the most authentic mountain singing group in the United States.”
- They recorded for Rich-R-Tone (1947), then Columbia (1949–1953), cutting mountain and gospel sides such as “Sunny Side of the Mountain” and “Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill.”
- Signing to Hickory Records in 1955 brought their commercial peak: seven charting singles between 1956 and 1961, including the 1958 Top Five “Come Walk with Me,” the 1959 Top Five hits “Big Midnight Special” and “There’s a Big Wheel,” and the 1961 Top Ten “Wreck on the Highway.”
- The Coopers joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1957 and became mainstays, with the Clinch Mountain Clan serving as a proving ground for sidemen including fiddler Tex Logan and Dobro player Josh Graves.
- They appeared in the film Country Music on Broadway (1964), and Columbia-era sides like “Thirty Pieces of Silver” and “Legend of the Dogwood Tree” became staples of country and bluegrass repertoire.
- The Smithsonian Institution proclaimed her the “First Lady of Bluegrass” in 1974, recognizing her role in keeping hard-driving traditional music alive.
- After Stoney’s death in 1977, she continued as a solo Opry member and bandleader, recording for Rounder Records and touring folk and bluegrass festivals with the old mountain style intact.
- She received the IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award in 1994 and was inducted, alongside Stoney, into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in 2008.
- A stroke suffered while performing on the Opry stage in 2001 effectively ended her career; she died September 13, 2011, in Sweetwater, Tennessee, at age 90, and was posthumously inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame in 2023.
