Country Artist Wilma Lee Cooper

She sang in her youth with her family’s Gospel music group, The Leary Family, which included her parents and sisters. They recorded for the Library Of Congress in 1938. That year, they were also recognized at the National Folk Festival in Washington, D.C, having been chosen through a competition to represent the state of West Virginia.

In 1941, Leary married fiddler and vocalist Dale T. “Stoney” Cooper, who was a musical accompanist for the Leary Family, and the duo formed their own group; Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper and the Clinch Mountain Clan. There were many similarities between Wilma’s recordings and Roy Acuff. This is seen in the use of Acuff’s repertory and prominent featuring of the dobro on her recordings. 16 tracks were recorded during her first time in the studio, five of which were also previously recorded by Acuff.

They were regulars for ten years on Wheeling, West Virginia’s WWVA-AM’s rival to the Grand Ole Opry, WWVA Jamboree, beginning in 1947 before joining the Opry in 1957. They were hired to do a series of transcribed shows to be aired across the country, a project that would considerably increase their reach and help them gain a large following.

Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper had remarkable record success in the late 1950s and early 1960s on Hickory Records given both their traditional Country sound and the damage Rock-n-Roll was doing to Country music’s popularity at the time. They scored seven hit records between 1956 and 1961, with four top ten hits on Billboard charts, notably “Big Midnight Special” and “There’s a Big Wheel”. They remained connected to the Leary Family tradition as well, recording popular Gospel songs like “The Tramp on the Street” and “Walking My Lord Up Calvary’s Hill”.

Stoney Cooper died in 1977 but Wilma Lee stayed on the Opry as a solo star and on occasion recorded an album for a Bluegrass record label. In 2001 she suffered a stroke while performing on the Opry stage which ended her career, but Cooper defied doctors who said she would never walk again and eventually returned to the Opry to greet and thank the crowds.