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If Pee Wee King is our ballroom king, then strong pretenders to the throne
would be the likes of
HANK PENNY
and Johnnie Lee Wills. Herbert Clayton
‘Hank’ Penny was born in Birmingham, Alabama on September 18th, 1918,
the son of a coal miner. In the 30s he formed The Radio Cowboys, a western
swing outfit who recorded for Vocalion. After the war, a five year tenure with
King Records for Hank as a solo artist, where he waxed the original version of
the celebrated Wynonie Harris R&B hit
Bloodshot Eyes
. In 1950, ‘The Plain
OI’ Country Boy’, as Penny billed himself, signed with RCA, who put out
eleven singles over a two year period, the best of which can be found on a
superb Bear Family album (BFX 15102).
You Played On My Piano,
from the
witty pen of Cy Coben has remained unissued until recently; just get an earful
of that superb honky-tonk piano by Vic Davis. Hank duets with Jaye P. Morgan,
a regular on his show at this time.
We find another brother of a celebrity in
JOHNNIE LEE WILLS
, who
joined famed brother Bob’s Texas Playboys in the mid-thirties as tenor banjo
player; he features on many of their recordings from this classic period (1935-
40). In 1940, he quit the Playboys to form his own outfit. He got off to a good
start, but his first big break came in 1943 when he took over Bob’s daily show
on the 50,000 watt radio station KV00 - ‘The Voice of Oklahoma’ in Tulsa, as
Bob had left to enlist. Johnnie Lee’s association with KVOO and his Monday-
thru-Friday show was to last nearly two decades. After the war, like Pee Wee
King he signed with Bullet in Nashville and enjoyed his first, perhaps only,
record success when
Rag Mop,
a song he co-wrote hit the ‘Billboard’ charts in
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