Stoney Coper And Wilma Lee Big Midnight Special (4-CD Deluxe Box Set)

Old time, bluegrass, traditional. Whatever you call them, WILMA LEE and STONEY COOPER kept it alive and kept it country. They sang and played their style of music as well as anyone ever has or ever will. The Grand Ole Opry and the Wheeling Jamboree made them stars...and stars they remained from the 1940s onward.

This 4-CD set includes all of Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper's recordings for Rich-R-Tone, Columbia, and Hickory. Every locatable recording between 1947 and 1964 is included. Among the traditional music classics in this collection are Little Rosewood Casket, Wicked Path Of Sin, Tramp On The Street, Willy Roy The Crippled Boy, Walking My Lord Up Calvary's Hill, Thirty Pieces Of Silver, Ain't Gonna Work Tomorrow, and many more. They also recorded the original version of I Dreamed Of A Hillbilly Heaven, although it wasn't released at the time (it is included here, though).

After switching to Hickory Records in 1955, the Coopers made some of the very finest new music in the old-time style, scoring hits with Cheated Too, Come Walk With Me, Big Midnight Special, There's A Big Wheel, Johnny My Love, This Ole House, and Wreck On The Highway. All of them are here, together with every other extant Hickory recording. 

The best songwriters of their generation, including Don Gibson, the Louvins, and Boudleaux Bryant wrote for them, and Wilma Lee herself wrote many of their songs.

Stoney Cooper died in 1977, but Wilma Lee continued to make appearances, and became a spokesperson for the music she loved and the music she did so much to popularize and keep alive for future generations. This set is a trove of classic American traditional music, sung with the passion it deserves, and played by some of the best musicians of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s. Most of these recordings have never been on CD!

The set also includes a full-length biography by Bruce A. McGuire with many first-hand accounts from Wilma Lee herself, as well as rare photos and advertisements.