Biography
Originally born Rosa Lee Carson, guitarist and banjo player Kate Moonshine earned her chief recognition through the precise backing she supplied alongside her father, Fiddlin' John Carson. In the late 1920s the pair presented a combined music-and-comedy routine that cast Moonshine as a spunky, devil-tongued mountain woman repeatedly besting the oafish character enacted by Carson. She maintained an independent recording career as well, performing bluesy story songs such as “Little Mary Phagan,” which recounted the murder of an innocent 13-year-old factory girl at the hands of her boss.