Cousin Emmy

Every morning but Sunday at 5:25 the notoriously noxious air of St. Louis is purified by the natural twang of real mountaineer goings on. These upcountry proceedings continue for an hour over CBS Station KMOX, a 50,000-watter with some 2,500.000 steady listeners. They emanate from a radio group known as Cousin Emmy and Her Kin Folks. There is square-dance music, a female duo singing something like Back in the Saddle Again, a comedy rube act, a "Western instrumental trio," and Cousin Emmy, who best describes the rest of the show: "First I hits it up on my banjo, and I wow 'em. Then I do a number with the guit-tar and play the French harp and sing, all at the same time. Then somebody hollers 'Let's see her yodel,' and I obliges.

And then somebody hollers 'Let's see her dance,' and I obliges. After that we come to the sweetest part of our program--hymns." Guitar& Slops. Not many St. Louisians are abroad at 5:25 in the morning, but Cousin Emmy does not mind. She is talking for her own mountain folk and for small-towners. They listen, too--such is the power of KMOX--from Canada to Guadalcanal. They also buy the cough drops and hair dye she plugs, as is eloquently testified by the $850 a week which Cousin Emmy usually takes in.

Cousin Emmy is a slightly faded blonde of about 30 with a voice like a locomotive whistle and a heart of gold. She has a broad bony face, a wide mouth, lots of platinum-colored hair, immense enthusiasm, and a masterly capacity for mugging.

She also plays at least 15 musical and questionable instruments, to wit: banjo, fiddle, guitar, French harp, tenor guitar, ukulele, trumpet, accordion, piano, twelve-string guitars, Jew's-harp, dulcimer, five-string banjo, hand saw, rubber gloves, "and a tune I makes by just slopping against my cheeks with my hands." Tobalcker & Opry. How she acquired these abilities is something of a mystery, even to Cousin Emmy. She was born, next youngest of eight children, 12 miles from the nearest railroad at Lamb, Ky.--the family lived in a two-room log cabin which "had cracks between the walls so big that you could a-throwed a cat betwix them without tetching a hair." Emmy's parents were hillbilly sharecroppers. She was christened Joy May Creasy. Says she: "I started strippin' tobakker when I was eight, I reckon. Summers I chopped out corn and wormed and suckered tobakker. I reckon I allus wuz a show-off." Joy May's schooling lasted two weeks.

She learned how to read by poring over mail-order catalogues. The day she first heard a radio in the general store in Lamb, she chose her career. "I set right down there in the store and I cried," she recalls, "and I told the folks that I was a-goin' to git on the radio. My mother she upped and whopped me."

After years of trying, she got to sing a song on the daddy of hillbilly radio programs, Grand 01' Opry, over Station WSM at Nashville. Then she made a hit yowling Ground Hog with Frank Moore and His Log Cabin Boys over WHAS, Louisville. Moore named her Cousin Emmy, and eventually she had her own air show. Two years ago KMOX hired her.

Billings and Baptists. In spite of Cousin Emmy's lack of schooling, she is an astute businesswoman who knows how to demand and get the top billing which her rustic showmanship deserves. Says she: "I know and can prove that I outdraw Pappy Cheshire [a rival hillbilly] or anybody else. So you just go ahead and put me on top of that there pile, where I belong." Murmured one radio engineer while Emmy and her "kinfolks" rattled the control-room windows: "She sure knows how to keep that program hopped up." A teetotaling, nonsmoking, unprofane Baptist, who forsakes parties and has remained unmarried because "I ain't got time to do no courtin'," Emmy gives the church 10% of her income and attends services regularly. She has made up about 60 songs, including several hymns. The most popular goes, in part: Oh Lord, please hear this message.

It's about my mother dear.

For she has gone and left me, And I hope she has no fear.

Oh Lord, dear Lord, please take her And keep her safe for me.

She'll have no sorrows in heaven, And that's where I pray to be.

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