Gene Hooper & Florence Cody Litho Country and similar items

AUTHENTIC VINTAGE CIRCA 1940s BLACK AND WHITE 8" x 10" LITHOGRAPH OF WWVA RADIO COUNTRY MUSIC PERFORMERS GENE HOOPER (FAR RIGHT) AND HIS WIFE FLORENCE CODY, AND UNIDENTIFIED BAND MEMBERS. Gene Hooper and Florence Cody are Maine residents. Florence is the sister of RCA Recording Artist Betty Cody. She met her husband Gene Hooper when he was a member of Hal Lone Pine's band. Hal was Betty's husband. This lithograph has some stains along left edge, otherwise it is in very good condition. BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: The team of Lone Pine and Betty Cody, who worked both together and separately, was one of the more notable husband-wife Country teams of the 40's and 50's. They were also representative of and perhaps the most successful of, a brand of traditional Country music that took root and flourished in rural New England and the adjacent Maritime Provinces of Canada. Harold Breau grew up near Old Town, Maine, and according to one story, received his atypical nickname from the Penobscot Indians. He initiated his radio career at WABI in Bangor in the mid-30's and soon came to lead a group known as the Lone Pine Mountaineers. Meanwhile, young Rita Coté had moved to Auburn, Maine, with her parents. She took an interest in singing at an early age. About 1936, her brother brought home a Patsy Montana record and the "little French girl," as Rita was known, determined to perfect the technique. The following year, Rita started to sing on radio at WCOU in nearby Lewiston with a group called Curly and the Country Boys. In 1938, she met Lone Pine in the radio studio and the two married on June 29, 1940. Rita began using the stage name "Betty Lou," later changing to Betty Cody, which was an Anglicized form of her maiden name. The Lone Pine Mountaineers continued on radio in Maine through the 40's and into the 50's. In 1952, they signed with RCA Victor and each had several solo and duet releases over the next three or four years. Ray Couture, an excellent lead guitar picker, worked in their band and later came to Wheeling where he took the stage name "Abner Doolittle." The latter taught the fundamentals of guitar to the Breaus' older son Lenny, who went on to eventual world renown as Jazz guitarist, Lenny Breau, (he was murdered in 1984). Meanwhile, Lone Pine and Betty Cody waxed such memorable duets as Trail of the Lonesome Pine and It's Goodbye And So Long to You, a cover of which by Mac Wiseman became a Bluegrass classic. In 1952, they recorded I Heard the Bluebirds Sing, which became a hit for Maxine and Jim Ed Brown in 1956. Betty's record of Tom Tom Yodel became a major hit in Canada and her I Found Out More Than You Ever Knew made the Country Top 10 in December 1953. This was an answer song to the Davis Sisters' No.1 that year, I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know. From 1953, Lone Pine and Betty Cody worked as regulars on the World's Original Jamboree at WWVA Wheeling, West Virginia. Sometime later in the 50's, the Breaus went to Winnipeg, Manitoba, where they subsequently split. Hal "Lone Pine," as he generally became known in this later period, remained based in Winnipeg, where he cut albums for the Canadian label Arc, some with a girl vocalist named Jeanie Ward. Later, he returned to Maine and remarried, working at some of his old haunts in New England and the Maritimes until his death. By then, several of his songs such as When It's Apple Blossom Time In Annapolis Valley and Prince Edward Island Is Heaven To Me had become Canadian standards. Betty Cody remained out of music for some years until her children had grown older. In the early 70's, she toured some with Dick Curless and played one night a week for ten years (1972-1982) at the Poland Springs Inn. She remarried in 1979, the same year that she cut a new record album. Today Betty makes her home near Lisbon Falls, Maine. The petite lady still makes an occasional appearance with her third son, Dennis. Betty's younger sister Flo and her husband Gene Hooper (b. 1924) had a somewhat less spectacular although more durable country music career that continues to the present. They all sometimes do shows with Allen McHale's Old-Time Radio Gang. Both Lone Pine and Betty Cody have had albums of their recordings from the 50's reissued in Germany. - (Biography by Ivan M. Tribe from the Century of Country Web Site.)