Doc Williams and the Border Riders

Decades of Country Music
Doc Williams and the Border Riders

Doc Williams and the Border Riders, 1950s.
From left to right: Hiram Hayseed, Cy Williams, Marion Martin, Doc Williams
seated: Chickie Williams

Doc Williams is a familiar name with fans of traditional country music. Although Williams and his group, the Border Riders, never recorded for a major label or scored a series of hits, they were well-known throughout many parts of the United States and Canada thanks to their regular appearances on the WWVA Jamboree out of Wheeling, West Virginia. They stayed with the show for many decades, toured all over the south throughout their golden days and released numerous records on Williams' own record label, Wheeling Records.

Early Years
Doc Williams, the founder and leader of the Border Riders, was born Andrew John Smik, Jr., on June 26, 1914, in Cleveland, Ohio. The child of Czech immigrants who came to the United States at the turn of the century, the family moved to Kittaning, Pennsylvania, located on the banks of the Allegheny River. Young Williams went to school in nearby Tarrtown. Music played an important role in his life right from the start. He learned to play cornet from his father and eventually taught himself to play guitar, harmonica, and accordion. At some point, Williams dropped out of school and worked as a coal miner for less then $1 a day.

The Border Riders Begin to Ride
In 1932, he returned to his birth town Cleveland and it was there that he really started his career in music. Already in Pennsylvania, he had performed at barn dances and also other venues in the Kattaning area with his brother Cy. In Cleveland, Williams joined Doc McCaulley's Kansas Clodhoppers and it was with this group that he became connected with the traditional old-time music of the West Virginia hills. Following his stint with the Clodhoppers, he soon branched out on his own and formed his first own group, the Allegheny Ramblers, which also included his brother Cy on fiddle and Curley Sims on mandolin, while Williams played guitar, harmonica, and sang. This was the foundation of what became the Border Riders; however, during the next years, the group underwent line-up and name changes as well. It was probably at that early stage that he adopted the stage name "Cowboy Doc".

Around 1935, the group moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where they appeared on KQV and changed their name to the Cherokee Hillbillies. They also appeared on WHJB in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, during this time. However, the group changed names again when they met female singer Billie Walker and became her backing group, the Texas Longhorns. She left in 1937 for WWL in New Orleans and Williams and the band, now left on their own, decided to change names once more and became Doc Williams and the Border Riders.

An early incarnation of the Border Riders, late 1930s
From left to right: Curley Sims (mandolin), Big Slim (guitar), Cy Williams (fiddle),
poss. Sunflower (guitar), Doc Williams (guitar)

Riding to Wheeling
Williams and the group moved to Wheeling, West Virginia, which became his adopted hometown. Soon, the Border Riders began appearing at WWVA and in December 1937, had their first live appearance at WWVA's famous Wheeling Jamboree, a stage show that had been started by the radio station in 1933. Their performances on the station went well and by 1938, Doc Williams was already the most popular performer on the show. At the same time the Border Riders began appearing on WWVA, another vocalist by the name of Harry C. "Big Slim" McAuliffe joined the group. By then, the group consisted of Doc and Cy Williams, Cy's wife Mary (appearing as "Sunflower"), Curley Sims, and Hamilton "Rawhide" Fincher. A year later, Fincher had been replaced by comic Froggie Cortez.

Legend goes that the first fan letter Williams received was by his future wife Jesse Wanda Crupe, who hailed from Bethany, West Virginia. Addressed to "Buck Williams and the Border Riders", she requested the band to perform at a local barn dance (other source state she requested the band to perform at Reawood Dance Hall in Hickory, Pennsylvania). However, sources agree that when Williams first met his future wife, he called her "chickie" as he though she was a "cute chick". Love blossomed and the twosome married in 1939. Jesse Wanda Crupe became Jesse Wanda Smik and as she was beginning to appear with the Border Riders occasionally during this time (filling in for Sunflower), she became Chickie Williams. She would join her husband's act full-time in the 1940s.

The 1940s: Memphis, Return to Wheeling and World War II
In 1940, Williams moved his group to Memphis, Tennessee, where they appeared on WREC. While they made Memphis their home base, the Border Riders toured the Mid-South, playing in Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi. Though, their stint in Memphis did not last very long. Williams was asked by Harry Stone to join the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville but Williams declined as his wife Chickie was pregnant and they moved back to Wheeling.

The years 1940 to 1942 saw Williams working in Yorkville, Ohio, where he operated the local airport as it was difficult to earn a living as a musician due to rationing. Aeronautics would be his passion for many years - he even would held a private pilot's licence eventually. However, Williams returned to Wheeling full-time after he had to close down the airport (his business partner had left to serve the country). At that time, the band included - apart from Doc, Cy and Sunflower - Jesse Porter and Smokey Davis. For some time during World War II, Williams appeared at WFMD in Fredericksburg, Maryland, and served a short time in the US Navy near the end of the war.

After the war: Doc Williams, the Entrepreneur
In summer 1945, Williams was discharged from the Navy, returned to Wheeling and resumed his career in music. He re-organized the Border Riders, which included by then Williams and his brother Cy, his wife Chickie and comedian Hiram Hayseed. However, the group was not on WWVA at that time as Williams had decisions to make. Since his beginnings in the 1930s, the old-time music that Williams was used to play had vastly changed and since the later part of that decade, had developed into the early forms of what we call today "country music". Various styles such as bluegrass, honky tonk and western swing had evolved from the mixing of traditional, rural old-time with different other genres such as jazz, blues, and other popular music styles. In the summer of 1946, Billboard reported that Williams was seriously thinking about transforming the Border Riders into a western swing unit, a popular country music style at that time.

He founded a cottage industry, opened a country store in Wheeling (right across the street from the Capitol Music Hall, where the WWVA Jamboree was held), and had published his first guitar instruction book already in June 1943 ("The Simplified By Ear System of Guitar Chords by Doc Williams"), which he sold on air and eventually disposed more than 200,000 copies. He also operated a civilian flying school at Scott Airport on Martins Ferry, Ohio, just a little south of his previous occupation in Youngstown.

On November 18, 1946, the Border Riders returned to broadcasting on WWVA after an abscene of about two years. The line-up had been consistent since the re-organization after the war and obviously, Williams had decided against a style change.

Billboard November 9, 1946

In 1947, Williams added another business interest to his stack. He became involved with the country music park scene in 1947, which was very popular in the northeastern states. On May 11, Williams opened the first season of his country music amusement park "Musselman's Grove" in Claysburg, Pennsylvania.On the bill that day were fellow WWVA artists the Davis Twins, Jake Taylor and his Rail Splitters (a business partner of Williams'), and Al Rogers. Always in search for new ideas and possibilites, Williams set up his own tent show in partnership with Toby Stroud, another longtime WWVA artist. Both singers toured Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New York State beginning in May 1948.

Wheeling Records
On May 7, 1949, Billboard announced that Williams and the Border Riders had cut their first recordings for a new company, Wheeling Records. The Wheeling label was the brainchild of Williams and a reference to their adopted hometown. The first recorded songs were "Beyond the Sunset - You Should Go on First" and "Bright Red Horizon". The first, an aggregation of a poem and an old hymn,which became a hit for the group, was the creation of Chickie Williams. Their daughter Barbara later retold the story of the song in an 1970s issue of JEMF Quaterly: "Early in their marriage, she [Chickie Williams] read the poem, "Should You Go First and I Remain" in a book of poems, and thought that it expressed her feelings toward Doc very well. To surprise him, she had the Newcomer Twins, Maxine and Eileen (then members of WWVA's Jamboree), help her make a home recording — she recited the poem while they sang background. Doc thought the recording was a great idea, and encouraged her to continue working on it. She eventually decided to recite the reading to the accompaniment of the hymn, "Beyond the Sunset," which Doc's secretary, Jean Miller, had once showed her in a hymnbook. The song and reading was performed over WWVA, and got a tremendous response from listeners, upon which Doc decided to record Chickie."

Williams bought the rights to the poem from its author, Rosey Rosewell, and organized a recording session in Cleveland, Ohio, as Wheeling had no proper facilities to record. As for the recording date, late April or early May 1949 seems to be a good guess. Williams released the finished recording, backed by his own song "Bright Red Horizon" on Wheeling #1001. Great response from radio stations followed and Williams tried to lease the recordings to a major label. However, none of them were interested as they considered a hymn not commercial enough. Soon, they proved to be wrong as "Beyond the Sunset - You Should Go on First" became a #3 Billboard country hit. It was covered by such artists as Hank Williams (as Luke the Drifter), Elton Britt, Rosalie Allen, Buddy Starcher, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, and others. The original version of Chickie Williams was also released on the Canadian Pioneer label.

Suprisingly, despite the enormous success of "Beyond the Sunset", neither Chickie nor Doc recorded for a major label in the following years. Therefore, the unit released its further recordings still under the Wheeling brand, which eventually resulted in more than 30 different releases on the label. In Canada, Williams' records were released by Quality Records. The bulk of the releases on Wheeling were by Williams and the Border Riders, consisting of traditional material like "Red Wing", "My Old Brown Coat and Me" (one of Williams' favorites), or own compositions in old-fashioned style like "I'm Watching the Train Passing By", which became the opening track for their shows. The song had been written by Chickie Williams while they were touring Newfoundland in 1952 and they recorded it in December the same year.

Billboard May 18, 1968

The Later Years
The 1950 season was the last one for Williams to operate his Musselman Grove park. He then concentrated on touring with his band. Since the 1940s, Williams and the band had toured the Canadian areas also and became as popular there as in the United States. The band continued to work throughout the next decades, touring, recording, and appearing at the WWVA Jamboree. He began recording albums in favor of single records beginning in the 1960s and released several LPs since then.

While the sound of the Border Riders had not changed much until the early 1950s, it began to change then. Electric guitars and drums were added at some point and by the 1970s, the band was performing with electric bass, steel guitar, electric guitar and drums, amending their sound. However, they changed the sound carefully, retaining their old-time image. In the 1970s, the conservative Doc Williams often stated in public that he was against "suggestive" lyrics in country music and demanded singers should be moral role models.

In the later part of their careers, Doc and Chickie Williams were often part of homecoming shows and special editions of the WWVA Jamboree (then called "Jamboree USA"). Their daughter Barbara took over care of the business issues at a later point and even wrote a book about them. In 2009, they were inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame and Doc Williams was named "West Virginia's Official Country Music Ambassador of Goodwill". Both Doc and Chickie Williams received many more honors throughout their later years, too many to mention.

Chickie Williams died November 2007 at age 88. Doc Williams followed her on January 31, 2011, at the age of 96 years.

Doc Williams and the Border Riders TV Show with Doc and Chickie Williams and including Ramblin' Roy Scott on electric guitar and Big Bill Barton on bass. This recorded TV show aired on WNPB, Morgantown, West Virginia, in the 1980s.

See also

• Doc & Cy Williams on Wheeling

Recommended reading
• Continental, Ohio, posters
• Second Hand Songs

Sources
• Hillbilly-Music.com entry
• West Virginia Music Hall of Fame
• Ohio County Library
• John Raby: "W.Va. Country Music Singer Doc Williams Dies" (Seattle Times), 2011
• 45cat and 45worlds 78rpm entries (beware of incorrect release dates)
• Barbara Kempf: "Meet Doc Williams: Country Music Star, Country Music Legend" (JEMF Quaterly #33, Part 1), 1974