The Coon Creek Girls

Long before the Dixie Chicks, there were the Coon Creek Girls, an all female string band of the '30s. When in 1936 Chicago radio programmer John Lair began managing the talented Kentucky fiddler/singer Lily May Ledford, he soon decided to build a band around her and recruited her sister Rosie, Wisconsinite Esther Koehler, and Ohioan Evelyn Lange. The quartet played a raucous brand of old-time with an undeniable skill and feisty exhuberance that made them a hit at concerts and on the radio in Midwestern Appalachia. In 1938, they committed to wax some historic recordings--the first for an all female string band--but went their separate ways later the following year. While a reformed version starring Lily May experienced a second life in the Folk Revival, the original Girls remain icons for rootsy instrumentalist women the world over.