From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Sun Oct 20, 2002  2:00 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Grandpa Jones
 
GRANDPA JONES (By Alain Dormoy)

Born Louis Marshall Jones, 20 October 1913, Niagra or Niagara, Kentucky
Died 19 February 1998, Nashville, Tennessee.

When he first appeared on radio in 1929, Jones was called "The Young
Singer of Old Songs". Then as early as 1935, aged 22, he went directly
to be nicknamed Grandpa by Bradley Kincaid who had him on his radio
show on WBZ Boston and maintained he sounded like a grumpy old man
on the morning show.
He then adopted a disguise and went on playing that role all his life.

He worked on many radio stations after leaving Kincaid in 1937 until
1942 when he joined the Boone County Jamboree on WLW Cincinnati
where he worked with Merle Travis and the Delmore Brothers. He recorded
two sides with Merle Travis, released as the Shepherd Brothers for the
newly formed King label in 1943. He served in the military police in
Germany in 1944, where he broadcast daily on AFN radio with his band
the Munich Mountaineers.

Jones became a Grand Ole Opry regular shortly after his discharge in
1946, recording regularly for King between '47 and '51: "Eight More
Miles To Louisville", "Mountain Dew" and "Old Rattler" - on which he
used the banjo for the first time on record - plus some gospel songs,
with Merle Travis and the Delmores as the Brown's Ferry Four. He
entered the US country charts in 1959 with "The All-American Boy"
(Decca) and went up to # 5 in 1963 with his rendition of Jimmie Rodgers'
"T For Texas" (Monument).

He was elected to the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1978 and performed
regularly on the Opry until his death in 1998.

Representative recording: 28 Greatest Hits (1998, King).
There is also a 5 CD-set on Bear Family BCD 15788 (Everybody's Grandpa).

Autobiography : Louis M. Jones with Charles K. Wolfe, Everybody's Grandpa.
Knoxville, TN : University of Tennessee Press, 1984.
Obituary: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/7219/grandpajones.html

I tried to check about Niagra or Niagara, Kentucky, to no avail: as
many sources (books or web sites) mention a Niagra as a Niagara, not
only about Jones' birthplace but on various other subjects.