Another pioneer of our business is lost to us now. Wilma Lee Cooper, a perennial favorite with Grand Ole Opry fans, died on Tuesday Sept. 13th at her home in Sweetwater, Tenn. She was 90.In 1994 the International Bluegrass Music Association presented Ms. Cooper with its Award of Merit. In 2001 the Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music of America inducted her into its Preservation Hall of Greats. Quite ironically, much of the bluegrass world missed the news in the wake of the huge celebration activities surrounding the 100th Birthday commemoration for Bill Monroe who was born on the same day.
Ms. Cooper was a repository of the durable mountain music of her native Appalachia, an amalgamation of styles rooted in old-time ballads and fiddle tunes, rousing gospel shouting and sentimental parlor songs. Her music has often been labeled bluegrass, but Ms. Cooper, whose clarion alto was well suited to the noisy auditoriums and schoolhouses in which she and her husband performed in their early career, cultivated a more raw, forceful approach than that typically heard in bluegrass.
“My style is just the old mountain style of singing,” Ms. Cooper said, explaining the difference in a 1982 interview in Bluegrass Unlimited magazine.
Wilma Lee and husband, Stoney Cooper, had remarkable record success in the late 1950s and early 1960s on Hickory Records given both their bluegrass sound (which has rarely been as commercially successful) 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."
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 has since returned to the Opry to greet and thank the crowds.
The Cooper's daughter, Carol Lee Cooper, is the lead singer for the Grand Ole Opry's backup vocal group, The Carol Lee Singers.
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