Revisionist history has largely erased the name
of Honey Wilds from country music lore. His
importance to the music's evolution remains
unassailable: a Southern humorist and regular
performer on the Grand Ole Opry between 1932
and 1952, Wilds was the creative force behind
the Opry's first tent tours, which were
instrumental in bringing rural music to mass
audiences. His recorded legacy was less
substantial, resulting in only a handful of
songs. Regardless, the reason why Wilds' name
is frequently omitted from the official record
is a simple -- yet infinitely complex -- one:
he was a minstrel singer who performed in
blackface for white audiences during the
segregation era. Rather than serving as a
painful reminder of America's past, he instead
fell prey to the nation's notoriously selective
memory, and has essentially vanished.
Although many of the details of his life remain
sketchy, it is known that Lee David Wilds was
born into abject poverty in southeastern Texas
in 1902. His father, the owner of a brickyard,
died of pneumonia at the age of 32. Wilds grew
up in a racially-mixed community, learning to
play the blues from the black musicians who
performed at a nearby theater. He also took up
the ukelele. In the mid-1920s, he joined a
minstrel show, forming a duo with Lasses White,
a blackface comedian and veteran of vaudeville.
White, who had earned his nickname as a child
because of his sweet tooth, was known for
giving his partners complementary stage names,
and so Honey Wilds was born.
Although music accounted for a large share of
Lasses and Honey's act, the two men were
primarily comedians. They performed novelty
songs, often parodies of current hits. Like Al
Jolson and Emmett Miller before them, their act
consisted of material appropriated from
African-American culture, allowing white
audiences the opportunity to experience, albeit
second-hand, a form of entertainment which the
society at large otherwise deemed wholly
inappropriate. (There also existed a parallel
circuit where black performers appeared in
whiteface, again as a means of crossing color
lines.) Most blackface performers insisted that
their work sprung not from racism but from a
deep admiration for black popular culture; the
validity of such statements is debatable,
although in Wilds' case it appears to be true,
especially given his background and adult
friendships with the likes of DeFord Bailey,
one of country music's few black acts.
In 1932, Lasses and Honey were offered a
six-week contract to perform at the Opry. Wilds
ended up staying on for over two decades, his
tenure broken only by a brief 1939 foray into
Hollywood; although he soon returned to the
Opry, both White and their mutual friend Chill
Wills remained in California. Instead of going
solo, Wilds formed another duo, Jam-Up and
Honey, in 1940. Following his return from the
West Coast, he also began pondering methods of
improving the existing touring network, which
consisted typically of two or three acts
hitting the road together. With the Opry's
endorsement, he bought an 80-by-200 foot tent,
assembled a road crew and a wide variety of
entertainers, and began promoting the tour
throughout the country. The Opry tent shows
proved highly successful, running annually from
early April to Labor Day between 1940 and 1949.
Despite close friendships with Hank Williams
(according to legend, it was Wilds who
nicknamed Hank Jr. "Bocephus"), Roy Acuff,
Ernest Tubb, Red Foley and other Opry staples,
Wilds rarely wrote or recorded his own
material, focusing instead on live
performances. Among his few existing recordings
include "Alabamy Bound," a traditional country
blues, and "De Lion's Cage," an old Emmett
Miller routine cut with producer Owen Bradley.
In 1952, Jam-Up and Honey left the Opry to
accept an offer in Knoxville; by that time, the
duo no longer performed in blackface, and their
act gradually fell out of favor. In 1957, the
team split, and Wilds dropped out of music,
running a service station until 1960, at which
time he began hosting a local children's
television program. By 1967, he had retired
permanently, and died several years later.
Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
