Born to a Kentucky coal miner in Pike County on July 9, 1923, Lois Laverne Williamson took the stage name, Molly O’Day and became a singer of honky-tonk songs until she came under conviction to abandon her career and become an evangelical preacher.

Molly found inspiration from her musically-talented family and from listening to the National Barn Dance radio show on WLS in Chicago. She especially liked the singing of Texas Ruby and Patsy Montana.

In 1939, her brother Cecil, also known as “Skeets,” left home and got a job on a radio station in West Virginia. It wasn’t long before his sixteen-year-old sister followed to become his vocalist. However, a year later Molly quit her brother to join Lynn Davis and his band, the Forty-Niners. It wasn’t long before the two married and continued to work radio throughout West Virginia. Through World War II, they worked radio stations in Alabama and Kentucky, winding up at WNOX in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1945.

It was during their work in Alabama that Molly met Hank Williams who always had a song for her that he had just written. She was very impressed with his writing ability and style of singing.

In 1946, Molly signed with Columbia Records and began turning out such hits as “Tramp On The Street,” “I Don’t Care If Tomorrow Never Comes” (which she learned from Hank Williams), and “The Drunken Driver.”

As her career continued, Molly turned more and more to singing religious songs as she fought the inward battle of right and wrong. In 1949, she was hospitalized with an emotional breakdown. Upon her release from the hospital, she and Lynn joined the Church of God, and by 1951, lost all interest in the entertainment field.

In 1954, Lynn was ordained a minister and for the next 30 years the two sang and preached in the small West Virginia coal mining towns of their childhoods.  Although Molly recorded a few religious songs for a small label, she never returned to the entertainment business. She died of cancer on December 5, 1987.

Molly O’Day could have been a super-star. She certainly had the talent for it, but chose something that she deemed more important to do with her life. However, she did serve as an inspiration for the next wave of female country singers, like Wilma Lee Cooper, Kitty Wells, and another coalminer’s daughter,  Loretta Lynn.

Dusty Owens
TCM Radio News