Doc Williams is celebrating his 96th birthday today. Doc and his lovely wife, Chickie, enjoyed tremendous success throughout the Northeastern United States and across the provinces of Canada from Ontario to the Maritimes. They worked out of WWVA, Wheeling, West Virginia and were one of the top performers of the Wheeling Jamboree for five decades. I had the pleasure of working with them from 1953 to 1957. They were a first-class act.

Doc was born on June 26, 1914 in Cleveland, Ohio and named Andrew John Smik, Jr. Early on he moved to Kittaning, Pennsylvania where he, and his brother Cy, eventually got involved with country music. Sy played the fiddle. In 1932 Doc returned to Cleveland to join a group called Doc McCaulley and his Kansas Clodhoppers. This is where Doc developed a love for the mountain music that would carry him the rest of his career.

In 1937, Doc moved the group to WWVA in Wheeling, and the band name was changed to Doc Williams and the Border Riders. They added a comedian, Froggie Cortez, and a cowboy singer by the name of Big Slim, the Lone Cowboy, and the act became one of the station’s most popular groups.

In 1935, Doc met Jessie Wanda Crupe, a singer with a sweet voice, and with the progression of time the two fell madly in love and were married in October of 1939. The stage name “Chickie” was adopted, and the two would enjoy great success together, until Chickie’s health deteriorated in the late 1990’s. Then it became necessary to move her to a nursing home.

Doc and Chickie started their own recording company in the ‘40s and apply named it Wheeling Records, and under that label recorded numerous songs. Their most popular recordings nation wide were “Willie Roy The Cripple Boy,” “Polka Dot And Polka Dreams,” and Chickie’s “Beyond The Sunset.”

In a CD they released in 2001, “Doc Williams and the Border Riders, with Chickie Williams,”Doc wrote a message to his love, “So, thank you, Wanda (the name I call you at home), for the happiness you have brought to me by saying ‘I do’ in 1939. Thank you for mothering our children. Thank you for bringing much credit to my career, and for the success you have profoundly helped me achieve. Even though you became a famous stage and radio personality, your home and your family always came first. As your husband, I could not ask for more. Thank you for all these happy years.”

I think the Williams’ audiences over those fifty-plus years of radio and personal appearances could sense their closeness and that translated into loyalty to them. Theirs was not only a deep love for each other, but they had a sincere love for the people who came out to see them time and time again.

Dusty Owens
TCM Radio News