Born 113 Years Ago Today in Kentucky, the ‘Hee Haw’ Star and Country Music Hall of Famer Known as “Everybody’s Grandpa”

Louis Marshall Jones, known as Grandpa Jones, was born in Kentucky on 20 October 1913 and became a lively banjo player and singer who helped keep old-time music prominent in country music. He later reached a wider audience as a regular on the television variety show *Hee Haw* and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1978.

Raised in a sharecropper family, Jones learned guitar as a child and began performing on local radio as a teenager. Entertainer Cousin Emmy taught him clawhammer banjo, which became central to his act; his 1940s recordings included “Eight More Miles to Louisville” and “Mountain Dew”. After serving in the US Army during the Second World War, he joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1947, then spent two decades on *Hee Haw*. He died in 1998, aged 84.