Bonnie Lou

Born Mary Joan Kath on October 27, 1924, in Towanda, Illinois, country and rockabilly artist Bonnie Lou first absorbed the yodeling cowgirl style of Patsy Montana through Prairie Ramblers sides that reached her via the strong signal of Chicago’s WLS. Her Swiss grandmother further encouraged yodeling, while childhood lessons added violin and guitar to her skills. At sixteen she began performing on radio in Bloomington, Illinois, and two years later adopted the name Sally Carson for appearances on the Saturday Brush Creek Follies broadcast from Kansas City’s KMBC; the Columbia network carried the program nationally, prompting her move to WLW in Ohio. Station executive Bill McLuskey placed her on the Midwestern Hayride country program as both singer and yodeler, gave her the stage name Bonnie Lou, and featured her regularly alongside the Girls of the Golden West, whose WLS broadcasts she had heard years earlier.

A handful of her radio performances later appeared on acetate, yet sustained recording success arrived only in the 1950s. Signed to Cincinnati’s King label in 1953, she reached the country Top Ten with “Tennessee Wig Walk” and “Seven Lonely Days.” When rockabilly emerged she cut “Daddy-O” for the same label, placing the single at number 14 on the Billboard charts in 1955–1956. The 1958 duet “Lah Dee Dah” with Rusty York followed, though a subsequent York pairing proved less successful. Leaving King for another Cincinnati imprint, Fraternity, she issued additional singles that failed to match her earlier chart impact. She remained active on Midwestern Hayride, which evolved into the Louisiana Hayride television program, before retiring and settling in Cincinnati with her husband, Milton Okum.

Her decision to base her career in Cincinnati kept her from the broader exposure a major RCA contract might have provided, yet she helped shape early rockabilly. Niche reissues on Bear Family and WestSide later documented her work, most comprehensively on the 2000 collection Doin’ the Tennessee Wig Walk. Bonnie Lou died in a Cincinnati nursing home in December 2015 at the age of 91.