Girls Of The Golden West
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In an age of great duet singers-the 1930’s-the Girls of the Golden West were recognized as the epitome of close-harmony female singing-easily an equivalent of the Blue Sky Boys. Historically, they were the precursors to the Judds, to the Davis Sisters, even to the Emmylou Harris-Linda Ronstadt-Dolly Parton "Trio" group. Throughout the 1930’s, as they were heard over big stations and even network hookups from Chicago and Cincinnati, they made history as Country music’s first successful female harmony duo. Their ultra-close harmony (stemming in part from the fact that they really were sisters), their well-chosen songs (many written or arranged from a woman’s point of view), their high, keening, wordless passages that sounded like two Hawaiian guitars-all these gave them a distinctive style and sound that has yet to be matched in Country music. Early in 1933, the Girls joined what was then about Country’s biggest radio show, the National Barn Dance, over WLS in Chicago. Every year, the station produced for its listeners a well-printed, well-written yearbook called "the WLS Family Album" and in the 1933 edition, Millie and Dolly appeared for the first time. They wore knotted neckerchiefs and fringed shirts, with real six-shooters in their studded holsters. The copy insisted that they were two genuine cowgirls who had moseyed up from Texas- specifically, from the town of "Muleshoe, Texas." It was to be a "factoid" that would make its way into dozens of later history books. In fact, the Girls were both born in downstate Illinois, in Mt. Carmel, on the banks of the Wabash, near the Indiana State line. Neither had ever set foot in Texas. The Girls grew up in Mt. Vernon and later East St. Louis, where they listened to their mother singing old songs and learned from her the rudiments of harmony. When they entered their teens, Millie found she could sing a natural harmony to just about anything her sister sang. She later explained, "when I hear a note, I hear the harmony note to it." They were soon broadcasting over KIL and KMOX in St. Louis, quickly changing their family name of "Goad" to something easier on the listeners-Good. A friend of the family came up with the idea of using the name, Girls of the Golden West, which was taken from an old cowboy story by Bret Harte and a subsequent opera by Puccini in 1910. After a short stay on the notorious border station,
XER and KFPI Milford, Kansas, they got a manager, returned to Illinois and got a job on WLS. WLS not only had, at this time, major Country stars like Gene Autry, the Prairie Ramblers, Smiley Burnette, Bradley Kincaid and Scotty Wiseman, they also had an enviable line-up of female stars, more so than any other station. There was Patsy Montana, Lulu Belle, Lily May Ledford, the Three Little Maids, Linda Parker, Grace Moore and others. The Girls’ earliest recordings for Bluebird were made in 1933 and featured older Western songs like Old Chisholm Trail, My Love is a Rider and Cowboy Jack. They soon learned they needed to find new material and in a few months, they were writing their own custom-tailored songs like Lonesome Cowgirl, Home Sweet Home in Texas and, possibly their most famous, There’s a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate. They also set about making their own costumes, which became more and more Western, and more and more ornate. They used as their models, the new crops of movie cowboys on the silver screen, since Millie recalled, "there were no cowgirls of the time that I knew of. By the mid-1930’s, both Girls had married men from WLS. Dolly married the Prairie Ramblers’ fiddler, Tex Atchison and Millie wed the announcer and promoter, Bill McCluskey. Towards the end of 1937, the team joined Red Foley and Lily May Ledford in a special program for Pinex Cough Syrup. This did so well, that it eventually led both girls to relocate to Cincinnati and station WLW, where they worked for a time on the Boone County Jamboree. In 1945, they were voted the most popular act on WLW. They remained more or less active until 1949, when they retired for a time. In 1963, they reunited for a series of albums for the Texas-based, Bluebonnet label. Dolly died in 1967 and Millie followed in 1993.
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