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Country music icon and Ashland resident Don Maddox poses ahead of the 90th birthday celebration in this 2012 photo. Maddox died Sunday at the age of 98. Mail Tribune archive photo.
An Ashland breeder and fiddler who performed at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville in the 1940s and again in the 2010s has passed away.
KC “Don Juan” Maddox, who rose to prominence in the 1940s and 1950s playing violin with his siblings in The Maddox Brothers and Rose, died Sunday in Ashland at the age of 98.
Maddox, who billed himself as the last surviving member of “America’s most colorful hillbilly band”, enjoyed a late revival that included the recording of three CDs at Ashland, a standing ovation in 2012 to the famed Grand Ole Opry, and a lengthy interview with Ken Burns in the 2019 movie “Country Music”.
Ken Burns’ interview with Maddox about the roots of country music was about 15 minutes of the miniseries, according to Barbara Harvey-Maddox, his wife since 2010.
“I was surprised he’s been around for so long,” Harvey-Maddox said.
According to Harvey-Maddox, a highlight came in May 2012, when Marty Stuart, a member of the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame, introduced her husband to the Opry audience.
“He’s Nashville,” Harvey-Maddox said of Stuart.
Maddox was born to sharecroppers in Boaz, Alabama on December 7, 1922. His family emigrated to Modesto, California, in 1933, and in the 1940s his siblings – Cal, Fred, Rose, and Harry – began to play a playful style of western swing. in the Central Valley of California in the 1940s which they called “hillbilly” and predated the country music genre.
“It was the family that started this music on the West Coast,” Harvey-Maddox said.
He served with the Army Signal Corps in central Burma during World War II. After the war he joined his siblings in the group as a violinist and comedian and gave himself the nickname “Don Juan”.
“They handed him a violin and they said play,” Harvey-Maddox said. “He learned everything on his own on this stage. “
As their recording and touring success increased, The Maddox Brothers and Rose moved to Hollywood, and the group made two appearances at the Grand Ole Opry in the late 1940s, according to media accounts. . They performed “Whoa Sailor” in 1947 and “Philadelphia Lawyer”, written by Woody Guthrie in 1949.
Don Maddox moved to Ashland in the late 1950s after the band disbanded to pursue a career as a cattle rancher. His ranch is visible from Interstate 5.
Ron Bolstad, who often performed with Maddox on stage with the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers, remembers the first time he met Maddox. He said he “couldn’t believe it” when he first moved to Ashland and met him at a local Rotary club.
“I listened to it in elementary school,” Bolstad said. He is now 82 years old.
Bolstad pestered him with questions about his tours in the 1940s and 1950s.
One story he remembers sharing Maddox with was of a performance in Texas in which the siblings shared the billing with an up-and-coming artist named Elvis Presley.
Presley at the time was performing in blue jeans, while the Maddoxes wore colorful sequined suits of a Hollywood suit.
Apparently, “Mama Maddox” caught Elvis wearing his jacket on stage, Bolstad said.
“She was so upset, like ‘Take this off her,’” Bolstad said.
In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Maddox resumed performing with the Oregon Old Time Fiddlers Association. Bolstad said that on stage Maddox enjoyed the spotlight and the performances, “but he would wait his turn.”
“When he stood up at the microphone he just energized the audience,” Bolstad said
About a decade ago, Maddox returned to a recording studio for the first time since the 1950s. Bolstad was playing back-up guitar.
“It was a shock to see this huge board and all these levers on it,” said Bolstad. “But he hung on there.”
In the spring of 2011, the Rural Roots Music Commission of Iowa selected Maddox’s album “High Desert Waltz” as Old Time Music CD of the Year. Maddox then recorded two more albums.
In 2012, Maddox was performing at country and bluegrass festivals in California and Las Vegas, and was invited to appear on the Marty Stuart Show. Maddox was subsequently invited to perform at the Ryman Auditorium and the Opry in Nashville.
“Hell, he got two standing ovations,” Bolstad said.
The family donated Maddox’s violin along with other memorabilia to Stuart for a planned “Country Music Congress” to be built in Philadelphia, Mississippi, according to Maddox’s wife.
Maddox will be remembered during a funeral service at 11 a.m. on Monday, September 27 at Scenic Hills Memorial Park, 2585 E. Hills Dr., Ashland. Maddox’s wife said the service, which will include military honors, is open to anyone.
Contact web editor Nick Morgan at 541-776-4471 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @MTCrimeBeat.
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