Although
Louis Marshall Jones was only around 30 years old when he cut his first acetate for
Syd Nathan's fledgling Dayton, Ohio-based King Records in 1943, he was already known as
Grandpa Jones, earning the nickname because he supposedly sounded like an old man when he spoke on the radio (over his half-century career,
Jones grew into the physical aspect of the name, as well). By the end of the '40s,
Jones was featuring his own flailing banjo style more frequently, and he began to sound increasingly like the second coming of
Uncle Dave Macon. This set shows how much the Hee Haw banjo character was exactly that, a character, albeit one
Jones nurtured and milked for well over 50 years.