Biography
Tommy Lee Scott came into the world on 24 June 1917 in Stephens County, Georgia, and left it on 30 September 2013 in Toccoa, Georgia. As a youngster he picked up guitar and later piano, then made his first radio appearance in 1930. The following year he assembled the Georgia Peanut Band and performed blackface comedy under the name Peanut. Solo radio work followed in Raleigh, Greenville and Augusta, after which he spent eighteen months as a regular on the Wheeling Jamboree. His longest association was with the Herb-O-Lac Medicine Show, established in 1890 by “Doc” M.F. Chamberlain, who ran it until 1936 before handing the formula to Scott and asking him to keep the show alive.
In 1939 Scott joined Charlie Monroe’s Original Kentucky Partners, where he encountered Curly Sechler and Fiddlin’ Dale Cole. He delivered serious vocals yet also teamed with Sechler for comedy as Ramblin’ Scotty And Smilin’ Bill and with Cole for blackface routines as Midnight And Peanut. During 1939 and 1940 he sold his own Manoree-brand medicine on Monroe’s programme at a rate of ten thousand bottles weekly. After a disagreement he departed for WHAS Louisville, reviving the Herb-O-Lac name, and was soon joined by Stringbean; the pair performed blackface comedy as Stringbean And Peanut and later toured the United States and Canada together for two years in the 1950s.
Scott reached the Grand Ole Opry stage in 1941, combining singing, comedy and ventriloquism with his dummy Luke McLuke. He then spent two years on radio and the road with Sechler. From 1943 to 1947 he played theatres across the country and appeared on numerous stations, among them the high-powered Border Radio outlets in Monterrey, Del Rio and Tiajuana. In 1945 the American Tobacco Company commissioned him to record fifty-two fifteen-minute programmes for network broadcast, later edited into twenty-six half-hour specials. He also appeared in the B-western Trail Of The Hawk and several musical shorts produced by Astor Pictures.
His travelling revue featured his wife Frankie, who performed magic until her death on 17 April 2004 in Toccoa at age eighty-four, their daughter Sandra Yvette, longtime companion Old Bleb—Gaines Blevins, who remained with him for more than thirty years—Blevins’s son Scotty Lee, additional musicians and other performers. As regular radio slots dwindled, Scott devoted increasing energy to touring, sometimes logging more than three hundred fifty days a year throughout the United States and Canada. Numerous young players gained experience alongside him, while established colleagues such as Clyde Moody occasionally joined the troupe. Silver-screen cowboys Sunset Carson, Johnnie Mack Brown and Colonel Tim McCoy, the last of whom stayed for thirteen years, also appeared in the show.
Into the 1990s Scott continued to travel with what he called “America’s Last Real Medicine Show,” though he reduced his road time and spent more weeks at his Toccoa home. He recorded for 4-Star and King, and some of his early sides were reissued in the 1980s by Germany’s Cattle label, which made a creditable effort to enhance the original sound quality. He also cut sides with both Sechler and Moody. His Medicine Show literature, which promoted Herb-O-Lac Compound and Snake Oil Liniment in lavish detail, suggests that over nearly sixty years few major country artists escaped an appearance with him and few leading programmes in the United States or Canada failed to feature him. In 1976 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame.
In 1939 Scott joined Charlie Monroe’s Original Kentucky Partners, where he encountered Curly Sechler and Fiddlin’ Dale Cole. He delivered serious vocals yet also teamed with Sechler for comedy as Ramblin’ Scotty And Smilin’ Bill and with Cole for blackface routines as Midnight And Peanut. During 1939 and 1940 he sold his own Manoree-brand medicine on Monroe’s programme at a rate of ten thousand bottles weekly. After a disagreement he departed for WHAS Louisville, reviving the Herb-O-Lac name, and was soon joined by Stringbean; the pair performed blackface comedy as Stringbean And Peanut and later toured the United States and Canada together for two years in the 1950s.
Scott reached the Grand Ole Opry stage in 1941, combining singing, comedy and ventriloquism with his dummy Luke McLuke. He then spent two years on radio and the road with Sechler. From 1943 to 1947 he played theatres across the country and appeared on numerous stations, among them the high-powered Border Radio outlets in Monterrey, Del Rio and Tiajuana. In 1945 the American Tobacco Company commissioned him to record fifty-two fifteen-minute programmes for network broadcast, later edited into twenty-six half-hour specials. He also appeared in the B-western Trail Of The Hawk and several musical shorts produced by Astor Pictures.
His travelling revue featured his wife Frankie, who performed magic until her death on 17 April 2004 in Toccoa at age eighty-four, their daughter Sandra Yvette, longtime companion Old Bleb—Gaines Blevins, who remained with him for more than thirty years—Blevins’s son Scotty Lee, additional musicians and other performers. As regular radio slots dwindled, Scott devoted increasing energy to touring, sometimes logging more than three hundred fifty days a year throughout the United States and Canada. Numerous young players gained experience alongside him, while established colleagues such as Clyde Moody occasionally joined the troupe. Silver-screen cowboys Sunset Carson, Johnnie Mack Brown and Colonel Tim McCoy, the last of whom stayed for thirteen years, also appeared in the show.
Into the 1990s Scott continued to travel with what he called “America’s Last Real Medicine Show,” though he reduced his road time and spent more weeks at his Toccoa home. He recorded for 4-Star and King, and some of his early sides were reissued in the 1980s by Germany’s Cattle label, which made a creditable effort to enhance the original sound quality. He also cut sides with both Sechler and Moody. His Medicine Show literature, which promoted Herb-O-Lac Compound and Snake Oil Liniment in lavish detail, suggests that over nearly sixty years few major country artists escaped an appearance with him and few leading programmes in the United States or Canada failed to feature him. In 1976 he was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame.