Biography
Lonnie Glosson entered the world on 14 February 1908 in Judsonia, White County, Arkansas, and departed on 2 March 2001 still in Arkansas. Country music has seldom produced a finer harmonica stylist, yet he also handled guitar with considerable skill. His mother Cora introduced him to the harmonica during childhood, and by 1926 he had already broadcast for the first time over KMOX in St. Louis. For the following four years he drifted from place to place, performing and singing wherever an audience could be found, until 1930 brought him a regular spot in the cast of WLS Chicago’s National Barn Dance. Within a few seasons he relocated to WWVA’s Wheeling Jamboree, then kept shifting to fresh stations for the remainder of the decade. By the early 1940s he was stationed at WHAS Louisville, where he appeared alongside Molly O’Day on the Early Morning Frolic. After she transferred to Wheeling, Glosson took a featured role on the Renfro Valley Barn Dance and worked with the Lilly Brothers and Fiddling Burk Barbour inside the Smiling Mountain Boys before rejoining O’Day once more, this time in Knoxville, Tennessee. In 1947 O’Day became the first artist to commit Glosson’s sacred composition “Matthew 24” to disc; he had written the apocalyptic number in the mid-1930s and had already performed it on numerous broadcasts. Her noted duet with husband Lynn Davis on Glosson’s “Don’t Forget The Family Prayer” likewise found wide favor among listeners. At times he shared stages with his own siblings Buck and Esther, both active entertainers themselves. Beginning in 1948 Glosson formed a durable partnership with fellow harmonica player Wayne Raney that produced the country chart-topper “Why Don’t You Haul Off And Love Me.” Together they hosted radio programs that promoted harmonicas and instruction manuals; estimates suggest several million instruments moved through those broadcasts from the late 1940s into the middle 1950s. After 1956 Glosson restricted most of his appearances to special school matinees across the South and Midwest, a schedule he maintained into the 1980s while inserting cautionary remarks about the perils of alcohol and narcotics—an approach that earned approval from both audiences and education officials. His earliest solo sides appeared on ARC in 1932 and featured the well-known “Lonnie’s Fox Chase” together with the blues-tinged recitation “Arkansas Hard Luck.” Subsequent sessions took place for Mercury Records in 1949 and Decca Records in 1950; later in the decade he cut instrumentals and vocals for Acme, among them the semi-spoken “The Old Dutchman’s Prayer.” He also contributed harmonica to several of Raney’s King Records dates. During the 1970s additional tracks emerged on Raney’s Rimrock imprint, and in 1980 the longtime colleagues reunited for a joint album.