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Photo courtesy of WRVA Radio Collection, Library of Virginia
Sunshine Sue (left) performing at the Lyric with, from left, her son, Billy; Joe Maphis; her brother-in-law, Sam; and her husband, John
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Photo courtesy of WRVA Radio Collection, Library of Virginia
The Lyric Theatre at Ninth and Broad after Sue left the show in 1957
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Photo courtesy of WRVA Radio Collection, Library of Virginia
The Carters (Helen, Anita, mother Maybelle and June) in 1946
In the evening of Saturday, Sept. 19, 1946, the big red curtain of the Lyric Theatre drew aside to applause. Onstage, before the center microphone, in a dress and heels with a flower in her hair, was Mary Arlene Higdon Workman, whom all in the house knew as Sunshine Sue. She stood amid a tableaux of hay bales, men in bib overalls and women wearing gingham dresses.
Sunshine Sue began this first broadcast of Old Dominion Barn Dance with what became her traditional greeting: “Now everybody get real comfortable, kick off your shoes, you know, dance in the aisles. And who knows? You might get lucky and get a better pair when you go home.”
Workman became one of the most recognized voices in Richmond and a regional celebrity — international, even, when the show was picked up by Armed Forces Radio.
She made a total fanboy out of Virginia Gov. William M. Tuck, who, during his term, kept a reserved box at the theater and ultimately crowned Workman, with some ceremony, “Queen of the Hillbillies.”
Her rise to popularity came at a time when Tuck fought to curtail the power of unions, and when racial segregation restrictions outright prevented most blacks from voting and persuaded many working-class whites not to bother. Sunshine Sue and her roster of performers evoked a nostalgic longing for a rural life displaced by modernity.
The musicians featured on Old Dominion Barn Dance during its 11-year run included Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters (June Carter attended John Marshall High School and later married Johnny Cash), renowned guitarist Chet Atkins, banjoist Earl Scruggs and Janis Martin, who subsequently earned the honorific of “the female Elvis.” The barn dance music was earnest and homespun, and the jokes corny — like Grandpa Jones complaining about a city slicker selling him a tub with a hole in it.
Richmond native and historian Caroline Morris, whose 2012 monograph “The ‘Voice of Virginia’: WRVA and Conversations of a Modern South,” provided great assistance for this column, describes Workman’s place in the cultural landscape thus: “There were three stages in Richmond then: the Executive Mansion, the Capitol and the Old Dominion Barn Dance at the Lyric Theatre — and they were all within sight of each other.”
The woman who, for a time, ruled the mid-Atlantic airwaves came from a Keosauqua, Iowa, farming family. She married her high-school sweetheart John Workman, and the couple, along with John’s brothers George and Sam, sought their livelihood during the Great Depression as troubadours. The four young people crisscrossed the country, as Morris writes, “often bartering musical performances for lodgings, meals or even cups of coffee.”
Workman sold advertising during the day for evening spots on the radio. During one of these shows, a studio engineer who didn’t know her name referred to Workman as “Sunshine Sally.” Another performer had that name; thus she went with Sue.
The Workmans parlayed their artistic preferences into an opportunity afforded by then in-vogue radio barn dances, starting in the 1930s on WHAS of Louisville, Kentucky. By the time Richmond’s WRVA sought to capitalize on “hillbilly” and religious programming, Workman and her group had already established themselves in Richmond.
“The Workmans referred to themselves as ‘folk’ or ‘country’ musicians most of the time,” Morris describes, “but willingly accepted the ‘hillbilly’ label when they came to Virginia. It was much better to be working hillbillies than unemployed folk artists.”
WRVA spent around $100,000 to rent the Lyric Theatre at Ninth and Broad streets, re-establishing the 1,300-seat venue as the station’s own. Sunshine Sue became a celebrity.
Workman was conscious of branding. Morris writes, “Workman was not only the face and voice of the Old Dominion Barn Dance, but also the program’s talent agent and producer, becoming perhaps the only woman in America to fill those three roles simultaneously.”
As an impresario, Workman formed the Southland Shows company, which produced the barn dance and affiliated events. She brought musicals like Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun to Richmond, as well as big-name stars like Tex Ritter and Gene Autry.
One of the most popular featured performers at the outset of the program was Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters.
Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg, in Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music, tell of how the Carters bucked Workman’s authority. The family held a nonexclusive contract with WRVA that allowed them to book their own concert dates when not working the radio shows or Old Dominion Barn Dance. Workman wanted exclusivity, while the Carters desired a degree of independence.
Zwonitzer and Hirshberg relate how June received word that WRVA wanted to meet with the Carters about contract matters. After a family discussion, June typed a formal resignation letter that they gave to WRVA managers. “It was official, that was it,” June is quoted as saying. “Then we went home to the Valley and had a chance to see all of our friends and to just stay in that part of the world.”
That incident came 18 months into the show’s run. But a high point, and masterful public relations event, came when cast member Curley Collins got married. Workman moved the show to the Mosque (now the Altria Theater), where 5,000 people witnessed the nuptials.
Within three years of its start, the program played to 368,189 paid admissions — an average of half of Richmond’s population each year — with the 95-cent top admission being one of the country’s highest for a radio barn dance.
“Mary Workman was carefully and determinedly insinuating herself into nearly every aspect of the studio’s broadcasting concerns,” Morris writes. “Her excellent management skills, artistic sensibilities, and financial acumen enabled her to forge a career where no other woman had.”
The twin ascents of television and rock ’n’ roll later swept Old Dominion Barn Dance from the airwaves. Bluegrass promoter Carlton Haney rebranded the show “New” then later moved it from the Lyric to the Bellevue Theatre in Northside before its 1964 ending. Workman’s daughter, Virginia Press Association executive director Ginger Stanley, recalls, “After ODB closed, Mama continued to do commercials but did not perform in front of large groups.” Workman preferred not to uproot her family from their Ashland farm for a move to Nashville. An Old Dominion Barn Dance reunion was held at the Mosque in 1975.
Morris observes, “Looking back at her career some 50 years later, musician and writer Tom Netherland described her as a ‘performer, organizer, boss. Pioneer.’”
