Red Foley - Biography
By Jonny Whiteside
Red Foley, one of post-war country music’s biggest stars, enjoyed a lead role in the music’s expansion from a rural phenomenon to a mainstream staple. Foley was the first country singer to have both his own nationally broadcast radio program (Avalon Time, co-hosted with comic Red Skelton) and his own network television show, ABC’s Ozark Jubilee. A star on Chicago’s prestigious WLS National Barn Dance and, later, at the WSM Grand Ole Opry, Foley was also among the very first singers to record in Nashville. Equally adept at gospel, boogies, ballads and sentimental recitations, Foley’s versatility, warmth and smooth vocal style set a new standard for country artists.
Born Clyde Julian Foley in Berea, Kentucky on June 17, 1910, he was a somewhat withdrawn child who was happiest when strumming a guitar. After winning a local talent contest at age 17, Foley found the confidence to pursue a singing career. In 1930, a talent scout from the National Barn Dance—at the time the country’s leading country music radio show—heard him performing and Foley was soon on his way to Chicago. Singing on the air as a member of John Lair’s Cumberland Ridge Runners, Foley immersed himself in music, even learning to play bottle-neck blues guitar with the aid of some of the city’s recently arrived black musicians. But country music remained Foley’s beat and, in 1933, he made his first recordings for the indie Conqueror label. Unfortunately he was met only limited success.
In 1937, Foley and Lair set out on their own, establishing their long-running weekly radio show, The Renfro Valley Barn Dance. This led to the offer as host of Avalon Time, which further propelled Foley towards national exposure. In 1941, Foley signed a contract with Decca Records, the label for which he would record for the rest of his life, resulting in classics like “Old Shep”—which Elvis Presley covered on his second RCA album—and perennial favorite, “Foggy River.” WLS wooed him back in 1940, and Foley began scoring monster hits like the 1944 flag-waver, “Smoke on the Water,” which stayed at #1 on the country charts for over three months, crossing over to the pop Top Ten. When Foley was teamed with The Lawrence Welk Orchestra that year for “Shame on You,” the disk hit #15 on the pop chart. In early 1945, Decca’s Paul Cohen brought Foley to Nashville to record, and the following year Foley was made emcee for the Grand Ole Opry’s Prince Albert Show, a half hour, nationally syndicated segment that was the Opry’s commercial crown jewel.
At the Opry, Foley became a pivotal figure, almost on par with nominal patriarch Roy Acuff, and, recording extensively with his Cumberland Valley Boys, he continued to pump out dozens of hit records. Among them were Top Five entries “That’s How Much I Love You,” “Freight Train Boogie,” “Tennessee Border” and the exotic Cajun number, “New Jole Blon,” which climbed to the top of the chart. Foley’s role at the Opry helped form some significant alliances. After he emceed Hank Williams’ fabled 1949 debut there, the two became fast friends and Foley, with Opry star Ernest Tubb, recorded some whimsical and very well-received duets, such as the Top Three “Tennessee Border No. 2,” and its flip side, “Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Age.” The latter cracked the Top Ten in 1950 (it’s also important to note that Tubb and Foley, along with Los Angeles’ Cliffie Stone, successfully lobbied Billboard to change the magazines ‘Hillbilly & Folk’ chart designation to ‘Country & Western’ in 1949). Foley followed up with another double-sided hit, his signature song “Chattanoogie Shoeshine Boy” (which topped the country and pop chart for 13 and eight weeks respectively) and “Sugarfoot Rag,” with its loping groove and the hot guitar of Hank Garland, went to the country Top Five and crossed over to the pop Top 25.
Even with the outbreak of major, new honky-tonk stars like Williams and Lefty Frizzell, Foley’s popularity never wavered. He had hits on novelties like “Choc’late Ice Cream Cone” and “Cincinnati Dancing Pig,” (another pop crossover), on gospel songs (his “Peace in the Valley” was the first spiritual to sell a million copies) as well as with, “Goodnight Irene,” another #1 hit which he recorded with Tubb.
Throughout the 1950s Foley issued literally dozens of albums on Decca and continued to clog the charts with hit records far too numerous to list here. One of his four daughters, Betty Foley, was herself a popular country singer (“Sweet Kentucky Rose”) and another, Shirley, married teen idol Pat Boone (their daughter Debby, of course, is famed for “You Light Up My Life”), just two small, yet illustrative examples of Foley’s formidable legacy. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1967 but the following year, while touring as part of an Opry package show, he suffered a heart attack and died, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on September 19, 1968.