Published: September 30, 2008 10:10 pm      

W.Va. Music Hall of Fame gears up for inductions

Two of West Virginia’s legendary figures in music — ageless bluegrass musician Everett Lilly and world-renown harmonica player Charlie McCoy — are among the second contingent of inductees into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

Tickets are on sale for the Nov. 6 event to be broadcast live from the West Virginia Cultural Center in the Capitol complex by public television, turning the spotlight on five living inductees and four deceased ones.

General admission runs $38, but tickets for special VIP seating and admission to a pre-induction gala at the Governor’s Mansion go for $250. Tickets are available by mailing a check to the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, 1427 Lee St., E., Charleston, WV, 25301. More information on VIP tickets is available at 304-342-4412.

Besides McCoy, a native of Oak Hill, and Beckley-area bluegrass legend Lilly, the other living artists planning to attend are country music singers Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, opera singer and instructor Phyllis Curtin and exotica pioneer and composer of television and film Robert Drasnin.

In the deceased category are jazz singer Ann Baker, composer-publisher Maceo Pin-kard, country music singer Red Sovine, America’s polka king, Frankie Yankovic, and Don Stover, once a member of the Lilly Brothers.

Actor, writer and perform Ann Magnuson, a West Virginia native, will host the induction.

McCoy cut 34 albums on his own and his talent is evident in albums featuring some of the giant shoes in the country music industry — Elvis Presley, Paul Simon, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and the Steve Miller Band.

“A special treat for me is to be inducted at the same time as Red Sovine,” McCoy observed when the second list of names was announced in August.

“One of the first jobs I had in Nashville was playing the summer fair circuit with Red and Stonewall Jackson.”

Sovine, who grew up in Charleston, is best known for his oratorical themes in such road songs as “Giddy-Up, Go,” and “Teddy Bear.”

Everett Lilly, now living in his ninth decade and an all-terrain vehicle enthusiast, still leads the bluegrass combo he and his late brother, Bea, assembled in the midst of the Great Depression. Bea died three years ago. The brothers had launched a long and colorful career as a duet on a radio station in Beckley.

The late Don Stover, an honoree in the deceased category, joined the brothers when the band began to grow. He died in 1996.

Everett took a brief hiatus to join the famous Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, but the Lilly Brothers regrouped and added fiddler Tex Logan for an 18-year stretch in Boston.

Besides Everett, the 21st century version of the band, known as the Lilly Mountaineers, includes two sons, Mark and Daniel, two state instrumentalists, banjoist Rad Lewis and fiddler Chance McCoy, and drummer Steve Sparks.

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com