Fair’s drawn its share of music’s big stars

hen the first Jefferson WCounty Fair happened in September of 1953, a 21-year- old singer from just up the road in See you at Winchester, Va., signed on as the event’s big musical entertainment. ! Patsy Cline, just 21 at the time, would go on to win fame as the best-loved female artist in country music, an icon worthy of compar- THE FAIR isons to Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. She was at the height of her career in the spring of 1963 when she was killed in a crash as she flew home to Tennessee fol- Patsy Cline lowing her performance at a benefit concert in Kansas City, Kan. Jane, Farming in 1974 Besides Cline, the Jefferson County Fair has drawn many other big names in country music over the decades including: n Grandpa Jones, the Ken- tucky-born banjo player and old- timey music icon who became a household name on television’s “Hee-Haw” n Ernest Tubb, who kicked off Grandpa Jones the honky-tonk craze in 1941 with “Walking the Floor Over You” n Minnie Pearl, the country co- median who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than a half-cen- tury starting in 1940 and on TV’s “Ozark Jubilee” and “Hee Haw” n Kitty Wells, a native of Nash- ville, Tenn., whose 1952 hit, “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” made her a female country music pioneer n Tex Ritter, known for the song, “Remember the Alamo” and “You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often” n PAID FOR BY CANDIDATE West Virginia-born Little Jim- Minnie Pearl COMMON SENSE REPUBLICAN my Dickens, the 4-foot-11 singer known for “I’m Little But I’m JANE TABB Loud” and other novelty hits COUNTY COMMISSION n Grammy winner Mary Chapin Carpenter, the singer-songwriter MIDDLEWAY DISTRICT with five Grammys and hits such as “Passionate Kisses” and “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her” VOTE! November 6 INFO: www.JaneTabb.com (See MUSIC’S Page 45) Kitty Wells

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