For a generation from 1934, Lulu Belle and Scotty were the nation’s leading Country husband-wife team. They starred on the National Barn Dance from WLS Chicago for some twenty years and spent a shorter period at the Boone County Jamboree over WLW Cincinnati. They also graced several motion pictures with their charm, music, and personalities.

Scotty was born in the mountain country of far western North Carolina where his family had lived for generations and where he learned to pick the banjo and sing the old ballads. Scott had his heart set on a college education and worked his way through a year at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Bradley Kincaid visited him that summer collecting ballads and told him that he could make it on radio, but Scotty was determined to finish college.

Scotty obtained a part-time job at the YMCA in Fairmont, West Virginia and attended nearby Fairmont State. He soon also began announcing at WMMN radio, where he took the nickname “Skyland Scotty.” After graduation, Wiseman successfully auditioned for a spot at WLS Chicago.

Meanwhile young Myrtle Cooper, also a native of the Carolina mountain country, had moved with her parents to Evanston, Illinois, at age 16 and in 1932, had also gotten a job at WLS, where John Lair had teamed her up with Red Foley as the song-comedy duo of Lulu Belle and Burrhead. However, this team seemed destined for oblivion as Foley’s wife, Eva, preferred that the pair not work together.

The WLS management decided to team Lulu Belle and Skyland Scotty. Their act proved not only a commercial hit on the National Barn Dance, but a romantic one as well and the pair married on December 13, 1934.

In 1936, Lulu Belle won the title “Radio Queen” in a popularity poll sponsored by Radio Guide magazine, surprisingly defeating a host of Hollywood and New York-based luminaries.  They remained top stars on the program until 1958 when they retired from active performing except for two years, (1938-1940) when they were at WLW Cincinnati.

Also beginning in 1938, they periodically journeyed to Hollywood, where they made a total of seven motion pictures beginning with “Shine On Harvest Moon” for Republic and continuing through National Barn Dance. One of their most popular film efforts, “Swing Your Partner” cast them as betrothed lovers working in a cheese-processing factory, with Dale Evans as the likable niece of a crotchety old lady who owns the plant.

As recording artists, the duo never made as much of an impact as they did on radio or on the screen, but they still chalked up some impressive discs. Scotty cut four solo efforts for Bluebird, in 1933 and Lulu Belle and Burrhead made four for Conqueror, in 1934. In 1935, they began recording together for the American Record Corporation, for whom they cut a variety of Old-Time and novelty songs including, Scotty’s partly recomposed version of Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “Good Old Mountain Dew,” which became the adaptation used by all later singers of the number.

They also contributed some original love songs such as “Remember Me” and “Have I Told You Lately That I Love You,” for Vocalion in 1939 and Vogue in 1945, respectively, which became Country standards. In the post-war years they recorded for such labels as Emerald, London, Ka-Hill, Trutone, and eventually, for Mercury.

In the early 50’s, while still at Chicago, Lulu Belle and Scotty made a widely heard series of radio transcriptions titled “Breakfast In The Blue Ridge.”

In 1958, the Hayloft Sweethearts retired from the National Barn Dance and went back to their mountain home in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Scott, who had obtained a Master’s degree at Northwestern, taught school, farmed, and served as a bank director. In 1971, Scott was elected into the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

Lulu Belle participated in community activities and in the mid-70’s, served two terms in the North Carolina legislature representing Avery, Burke, and Mitchell counties (as a Democrat in a normally GOP district).

They recorded periodically, cutting three albums for Starday, in the 60’s and a final one for Old Homestead, in 1974. Other recorded material appeared on such labels as Birch and Super. They also made a few rare concert appearances in the 70’s.

Scotty died January 31, 1981 while returning from a Florida vacation. He left an unfinished autobiography, which was subsequently published as Wiseman’s View by the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1986.

Lulu Belle married a retired lawyer and long-time family friend in 1983. She did a solo album for Old Homestead in 1986. Surprisingly, little of Lulu Belle and Scotty’s original recordings have been reissued. One album of 1930’s material appeared in the Old Homestead collector series and another on the German label Castle from later material. Beginning in 1989, Mar-Lu began releasing radio transcription material in a collector’s edition of which three had come out by 1993.

Lulu Belle died on February 8, 1999 from Alzheimer's disease.

Ivan M. Tribe
Century of Country