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Minnie Pearl

 
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Minnie Pearl

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Wearing calico and gingham dresses and always sporting a big old straw hat with a $1.98 price tag hanging down, Minnie Pearl would light up the stage with a broad grin and offer her fans a boisterous "Howwwdyyy" before tickling them with her unique brand of downhome country corn, most of which was centered around her finding herself "a feller." For over 50 years, Pearl was the undisputed queen of country comedy and over her career was an icon of the Grand Ole Opry. For 20 of those years, she was also a staple of the syndicated sketch comedy show Hee Haw. Born Sarah Ophelia Colley in Centerville, TN, she originally aspired and trained to become a serious actress. However, she was touring with an Atlanta-based troupe when she created Minnie Pearl. The character was an instant hit and Colley never looked back; she went on to become one of America's first successful standup comediennes. In addition to her work on the Opry, where she debuted in 1940, and its television shows, Pearl frequently toured the country with other performers. She also appeared in a handful of feature films, beginning with the tuneful Forty Acre Feud (1965). Unlike the brash, man-hungry Minnie Pearl, Sarah Colley was a cultured, gracious, and caring woman married to her manager Henry Cannon. The two lived next door to the governor's mansion in Nashville. During her career, Pearl received numerous awards. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1975. A decade later, she underwent a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer. Upon her recovery, Pearl became a volunteer and spokesperson for the American Cancer Society and in 1987 was awarded the society's Courage Award by President Ronald Reagan at a special White House ceremony. In 1991, Pearl suffered a crippling stroke. On March 5, 1996, she suffered what was diagnosed as either another stroke or a brain seizure and passed away at age 83. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
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Minnie Pearl

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Comedienne; singer

With her trademark straw hat dangling its price tag and her raucous "How-dee!" Minnie Pearl has established a forty-year reign as the queen of country comedy. The decidedly down-home Minnie is the alter ego of Sarah Colley Cannon, a refined and educated native of Centerville, Tennessee. Cannon began performing as Minnie Pearl in 1940 on the Grand Ole Opry, and some might argue that her face and voice are the most famous ever to emerge from that show. "Minnie Pearl seems indestructible," writes Leah Rozen in People magazine. "There may be newer and hipper characters, but for… years now the nation has settled back happily and laughed every time Minnie has barged onstage."

Sarah Ophelia Colley was born October 25, 1912, the youngest of five daughters. Her family was among the most well-to-do in tiny Centerville because her father owned the local lumber business. Reared in a home where education and refinement were paramount—a situation she finds ironic today, given the hayseed nature of her comic character—Colley was expected to do well in school and to attend college. At eighteen she entered Ward-Belmont College, an expensive finishing school in Nashville, where she majored in drama and dance. A flair for comedy had taken root by that time, quite against her will. "Even when I did serious parts I got laughs," she told People.

After graduation Colley returned to her hometown, where she taught dancing and drama for two years. Decorum demanded that she reach the age of twenty-one before she could travel on her own, and she spent the two years dreaming of a Broadway career. When she finally turned twenty-one she took employment with the Wayne P. Sewall Production Company, an Atlanta-based outfit that sent directors to small communities to stage plays and variety shows. Colley worked for the company for six years, from 1934 until 1940, and she travelled throughout the South into all the tiniest mountain villages. As she journeyed from place to place she picked up stories, songs, and impressions that she stored with no particular purpose in mind.

"I went on the road, and put on these amateur shows, and I met a lot of Minnie Pearls," she remembered in Behind Closed Doors: Talking to the Legends of Country Music. "I met a lot of country girls who didn’t win the beauty contest, but wanted to be funny, and wanted to be loved and wanted to love people." Gradually, Sarah Ophelia Colley realized that she too was one of these women. She began doing small bits of comedy, adopting Minnie Pearl because it combined two popular Southern names. The final inspiration for Minnie Pearl came from a mother of sixteen who lived in a cabin on Brenlee Mountain in Alabama. "I came away from there

imitating her," Colley said. "Not mocking her, but imitating her. That’s when Minnie Pearl was actually born."

Colley was earning a sparse living from the Works Progress Administration in 1940 when she entertained a banker’s convention as Minnie Pearl. One of the conventioneers paved her way to an audition at the Grand Ole Opry, and soon she was a regular. She would appear on the Opry at night and then travel all week with one of the touring units; often she was the only woman in the group. Her trademark price tag became a part of the act quite by chance, when she literally forgot to cut the tag off some plastic flowers she had added to her straw hat. The price—$1.98—has never changed.

Colley had been working as Minnie Pearl at a grueling pace for seven years when she met her husband, Henry Cannon. Cannon was a licensed pilot who owned a charter service, and after their marriage he flew his popular wife and her co-workers to their live concerts. Thus marriage hardly altered Minnie Pearl’s busy schedule. Over the years, as she played bigger venues and moral standards changed, Minnie became slightly more racy and much rowdier. Her costume has not been altered, however, and many of her one-liners are resurrected from scripts that are decades old. "All those dumb jokes," she recalled in People. "They’re all old. They’re all dumb. The minute I look at a joke, it comes back to me."

Minnie Pearl was nominated to the Country Music Hall of Fame fourteen times before she was finally inducted in 1975. The long wait for the industry’s highest honor was no doubt related to the fact that Minnie Pearl has done little real singing over the years; only once, in 1966, did she place a song, "The Answer to Giddyup Go," on the country charts. Her inclusion in the Country Music Hall of Fame—and a subsequent Pioneer Award from the Academy of Country Music—reflect the fact that Minnie Pearl’s brand of hayseed comedy is an art form with a tradition as honorable as any musical one.

Having celebrated her fiftieth anniversary as Minnie Pearl in 1990, Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon plans to keep performing, at least on the Opry. Describing her character, whom she views as an eccentric sister, Colley Cannon said: "Minnie Pearl is just as wild as a can of crab. She’s nutty as a fruitcake. She doesn’t care whether school keeps or not. She’s great. I’m stupid, but she’s great. And the reason she’s great is because she doesn’t try to be serious. She just worries about whether we’re going to have the church social on Friday night or Saturday night or Sunday night. And about what she’s going to wear, and if a feller is going to kiss her on the way home. Most of the time he doesn’t. But she thinks next time he will."

Selected discography
Minnie Pearl, Everest.
Monologue, RCA.
How To Catch a Man, RCA.
Cousin Minnie, Starday.
(With Grandpa Jones) Grand Ole Opry Stars, RCA.
(Contributor) Stars of the Grand Ole Opry, RCA.

Sources
Books
The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, Harmony, 1977. Nash, Alanna, Behind Closed Doors: Talking with the Legends of Country Music, Knopf, 1988.
Shestack, Melvin, The Country Music Encyclopedia, Crowell, 1974.
Stambler, Irwin and Grelun Landon, The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country, and Western Music, St. Martin’s, 1969.

Periodicals
People, October 26, 1987.
AMG AllMusic Guide: Pop Artists:

Minnie Pearl

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  • Genres: Country

Biography

Minnie Pearl, a member of the Grand Ole Opry cast from 1940 until her death in 1996, was country music's preeminent comedian and one of the most widely recognized comic performers American culture has ever produced. With her straw hat and its dangling $1.98 price tag, her representation of herself as a man-chasing spinster in the small town of Grinder's Switch, TN, and her great-hearted holler of "How-DEE! I'm just so proud to be here" as she took to the Opry stage, Pearl became an icon of rural America even as she lovingly satirized its ways.

Cousin Minnie Pearl grew up among people quite different from the Uncle Nabob, Brother, and boyfriend Hezzie who populated her comic routines. Born Sarah Ophelia Colley, she was the daughter of a prosperous lumberman in Centerville, TN, and she attended tony Ward-Belmont College in Nashville as a theater major. As a young woman she favored classical music, not country. In college she focused especially on her dance classes, which would serve her well as she developed her top-notch stage presence, and after college she taught dance for several years. Then she took a job as a dramatic coach with a touring theater company based in Atlanta. As the group barnstormed through the Depression-era south, she would try to promote the group's shows by making brief appearances at local Lions' clubs and the like. She hit on a routine in which she delivered an impression of a small-town girl, Minnie Pearl, and then began to amplify the impression with traits she observed in people she met along the way. By 1939, the Minnie Pearl character was well developed, but Colley had to return to Centerville that year to help care for her ill mother.

In 1940 Colley appeared at a banking convention in Centerville at which some of the executives of the Opry's host station, WSM, happened to be in attendance. One suggested that she audition for the Opry, and despite the misgivings of Opry managers that she might be seen as ridiculing country people, she was accepted for a late-evening slot. Several hundred cards and letters addressed to Minnie Pearl arrived at the station over the following weeks, and her place in the cast was assured. "I don't think people think of her so much as a show business act as a friend," Colley would later observe.

During World War II, Pearl toured with the Camel Caravan, and she married Nashville pilot Henry Cannon in 1947. She authored a cookbook and became a prominent figure in Nashville social circles under the name of Sarah Cannon. But her greatest fame came from her Opry performances, some of which were broadcast nationally when the show hit prime time in the 1940s. In the late '40s and early '50s, Pearl often worked as part of a duo with comedian Rod Brasfield, and by 1957 she was famous enough to be featured on NBC television's This Is Your Life program.

Pearl went on to make many more television appearances in the '60s and '70s, eventually joining the cast of the hillbilly-themed variety show Hee Haw. That show made varied use of her comedic talents, featuring her in such segments as "Driving Miss Minnie" in addition to her usual Grinder's Switch settings. She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1975. Pearl was still a television fixture in the 1980s, when she appeared on TNN's Nashville Now. She also toured the country for much of her career and made a number of recordings. One of them, the recitation "Giddyup Go Answer," a rejoinder to Red Sovine's sentimental trucker number, became a Top Ten hit. Performing into the 1990s, Pearl suffered a stroke in 1991 and died five years later. ~ James Manheim, Rovi
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Minnie Pearl

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Minnie Pearl

Minnie Pearl performing at Knott's Berry Farm
Background information
Birth name Sarah Ophelia Colley
Also known as Minnie Pearl
Born October 25, 1912(1912-10-25)
Centerville, Tennessee,
United States
Died March 4, 1996(1996-03-04) (aged 83)
Nashville, Tennessee,
United States
Genres Country
Comedy
Occupations Country comedian
Years active 1939–1991

Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon (October 25, 1912 – March 4, 1996), known professionally as Minnie Pearl, was an American country comedienne who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years (from 1940 to 1991) and on the television show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1991.[1][2]

Contents

Biography

Early life

Sarah Colley was born in Centerville, in Hickman County, Tennessee, about 50 miles (80 km) southwest of Nashville. She was the youngest of the five daughters of a prosperous lumberman in Centerville.[3] She graduated from Ward-Belmont College (now Belmont University), at the time Nashville's most prestigious school for young ladies, where her major was theater studies and dance was a particular interest. After graduation she taught dance for several years.[4]

Professional career

Pearl in 1965.

Her first professional theatrical job was with the Wayne P. Sewell Production Company, a touring theater company based in Atlanta, for which she produced and directed plays and musicals for local organizations in small towns throughout the southeastern United States.[3][4]

As part of her work with the Sewell company, she made brief appearances at civic organizations to promote the group's shows. She developed her Minnie Pearl routine during this period.[4] While producing an amateur musical comedy in Baileyton, Alabama, she met a mountain woman whose style and talk became the basis for "Cousin Minnie Pearl".[3] Her first stage performance as Minnie Pearl was in 1939 in Aiken, South Carolina.[3] The following year, executives from Nashville radio station WSM-AM saw her perform at a bankers' convention in Centerville and gave her an opportunity to appear on the Grand Ole Opry on November 30, 1940.[3][4] The success of her debut on the show began an association with the Grand Ole Opry that continued for more than 50 years.[5]


Pearl's comedy was gentle satire of rural Southern culture, often called "hillbilly" culture. Pearl always dressed in styleless "down home" dresses and wore a hat with a price tag hanging from it, displaying the price of $1.98. Her catch phrase was "How-w-w-DEE-E-E-E! I'm jes' so proud to be here!" delivered in a loud holler. After she became an established star, her audiences usually shouted "How-w-w-DEE-E-E-E!" back. Pearl's humor was often self-deprecating, and involved her unsuccessful attempts at attracting the attention of "a feller" and, particularly in later years, her age. She also told monologues involving her comical 'ne'er-do-well' relatives, notably "Uncle Nabob" and "Brother", who was simultaneously both slow-witted and wise. She usually closed her monologues with the exit line, "I love you so much it hurts!" She also sang comic novelty songs.

Hat on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC

Pearl's comic material derived heavily from her hometown of Centerville, which in her act she called Grinder's Switch. Grinder's Switch is a community just outside of Centerville that consisted of little more than a railroad switch. Those who knew her recognized that the characters were largely based on real residents of Centerville. So much traffic resulted from fans and tourists looking for Grinder's Switch that the Hickman County Highway Department eventually changed the designation on the "Grinder's Switch" road sign to "Hickman Springs Road."

Cannon portrayed Minnie Pearl for many years on television, first on ABC's Ozark Jubilee in the late 1950s; then on the long-running television series Hee Haw, both on CBS and the subsequent syndicated version. She made several appearances on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. Her last regular performances on national television were on Ralph Emery's Nashville Now country-music talk show on the former Nashville Network cable channel. With Emery she performed in a weekly feature, "Let Minnie Steal Your Joke," in the Minnie Pearl character and read jokes submitted by viewers, with prizes for the best jokes.[3]

Cannon made a cameo appearance in the film Coal Miner's Daughter, in which she appears at the Opry as her Minnie Pearl character.

Family life

On February 23, 1947 Sarah Colley married Henry R. Cannon, who had been an Army Air Corps fighter pilot during World War II and was then a partner in an air charter service. After the marriage, Henry Cannon set up his own air charter service for country music performers and took over management of the Minnie Pearl character.[3][5] His clients in the charter service included Eddy Arnold, Colonel Tom Parker, Hank Williams, Carl Smith, Webb Pierce, and Elvis Presley.[3] The couple had no children.[5] In 1969 they purchased a large estate home in Nashville next door to the Tennessee Governor's mansion.[6]

Chicken restaurants

In the late 1960s Nashville entrepreneur John Jay Hooker persuaded Cannon and African-American gospel singer Mahalia Jackson to lend their names to a chain of fried chicken restaurants established to compete with Kentucky Fried Chicken. After initially reporting good results and enjoying a public stock worth $64 million, the venture collapsed amid allegations of accounting irregularities and stock price manipulation. The ensuing investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission cleared both Cannon and Jackson of involvement in financial wrongdoings, but both were embarrassed by the negative publicity.

Cancer research

After battling breast cancer through aggressive treatments including a double mastectomy and radiation therapy, she became a spokeswoman for the medical center in Nashville where she had been treated. She took on this role as herself, Sarah Ophelia Cannon, not Minnie Pearl, although a nonprofit group, the Minnie Pearl Cancer Foundation, was founded in her memory to help fund cancer research. The center where she was treated was later named the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center, and has been expanded to several other hospitals in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. Her name has also been lent to the affiliated Sarah Cannon Research Institute.[citation needed]

Final years

Cannon suffered a serious stroke in June 1991,[3] bringing her performing career to an end. After the stroke she resided in a Nashville nursing home where she received frequent visits from country music industry figures, including Chely Wright, Vince Gill and Amy Grant. Her death on March 4, 1996, at the age of 83, was attributed to complications from another stroke. She is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Franklin, Tennessee.

Legacy and influence

She was an important influence on younger female country music singers and rural humorists such as Jerry Clower, Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, Carl Hurley, David L Cook, Chonda Pierce, Ron White and Larry the Cable Guy. In 1992, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts. In 2002 she was ranked as number 14 on CMT's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music list.[citation needed]

She was friends with performers outside the country genre, including Dean Martin (she appeared on an episode of The Dean Martin Show), and Paul Reubens (Pee-wee Herman).[7] In 1992 Reubens made what would be his last appearance as Pee-wee Herman for the next 15 years at a Minnie Pearl tribute show.[8]

Bronze statues of Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff are displayed in the lobby of the Ryman Auditorium. Chely Wright and Dean Sams (of Lonestar) posed for the statues.

A museum dedicated to Minnie Pearl was situated just outside the Grand Ole Opry House at Opryland USA (next to another museum dedicated to Roy Acuff), but the museum closed along with the theme park in 1997. Many of its artifacts were moved to the adjacent Grand Ole Opry Museum, some of which may have been damaged in the 2010 Tennessee floods.

Books

Title Publisher/Studio Copyright[9]
Minnie Pearl's Diary Greenberg 1953
Minnie Pearl's Christmas at Grinder's Switch (With Tennessee Ernie Ford) Abingdon Press 1963
Minnie Pearl Cooks Aurora Publishers 1970
Minnie Pearl: An Autobiography (with Joan Dew) Simon and Schuster 1980
Christmas At Grinder's Switch (with Roy Acuff) Abingdon Press 1985
Best Jokes Minnie Pearl Ever Told (Plus a Few She Overheard!) (compiled by Kevin Kenworthy) Rutledge Hill Press 1999

Recordings

Selected Albums

Title Record Label Copyright[9]
Country Music Caravan* RCA Victor 1954
Howdy! Sunset 1960
America's Beloved Minnie Pearl Starday 1965
The Country Music Story Starday 1966
Lookin' Fer A Feller Starday 1967
Hall of Fame (Vol. 9)*, (contributor) Starday c. 1969
Thunder on the Road* Starday c. 1970
Grandpa Jones and Minnie Pearl RCA Camden 1973
Stars of the Grand Ole Opry* RCA 1974
Live at the Grand Ole Opry* (With Hank Williams) MGM 1976
New Harvest - First Gathering* (Dolly Parton album; appears on the track "Applejack") RCA 1977
Backstage at the Grand Ole Opry* RCA 1980
  • = a guest appearance on another star's album or an appearance on a various artists album.

Singles

Minnie Pearl released a number of single records for RCA Victor during the 1950s including a few duets with Grandpa Jones. During this period she also made guest appearances on records by Chet Atkins and Ernest Tubb. In the 1960s she moved to Starday Records. At age 54 she recorded a top ten hit for Starday, "Giddyup Go - Answer," a response to Red Sovine's classic "Giddyup Go".[10] She later recorded with Sovine and Buddy Starcher in other single releases.

Pearl was back on RCA in 1974 when she and Archie Campbell released a parody record of Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's hit "As Soon As I Hang Up The Phone" which received airplay but did not chart. In 1977, she appeared with a number of other Opry members on Dolly Parton's New Harvest - First Gathering album, singing on the song "Applejack". In 1986 she was a featured guest vocalist, along with Jerry Clower, on the Ray Stevens comedy single entitled "Southern Air". It charted in the Top-70 of Billboard

Year Title US Country
1966 "Giddyup Go - Answer" 10

References

Notes

  1. ^ New York Times
  2. ^ New York Times
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Minnie Pearl Inductee Biography, Country Music Hall of Fame website. Retrieved February 14, 2009.
  4. ^ a b c d James Manheim (All Music Guide), Minnie Pearl Biography, retrieved from the Country Music Television website, February 14, 2009.
  5. ^ a b c Kristine McCusker (2004), in Notable American Women, Edward T. James, Barbara Sicherman, Janet Wilson James, Paul S. Boyer, and Susan Ware, editors, Harvard University Press, ISBN 067401488X, ISBN 9780674014886, pp. 505-506.
  6. ^ MusicCityPearl.com (archived website)
  7. ^ Paul Reubens interview
  8. ^ Robert Lloyd, Pee-wee’s Back in the Limelight, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2006
  9. ^ a b Library of Congress Catalog search results
  10. ^ Minnie Pearl Biography, CMT.com, accessed June 2, 2011

External links


This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 
Related topics:
Country Comedy (2007 Album by Various Artists)
Country Video Hall of Fame, Vol. 1 (Music Film)
Grand Ole Opry Country Music Celebration (1989 Music Film)

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