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| Giving Bonnie credit 'cause they don't. |
James Robert Owen “Bob” Atcher was born into a musical family in Hardin County, Kentucky. He learned to play violin from his champion fiddle-playing father and picked up guitar as well. Something else he learned – and this was either from his father or his grandfather (turns out you can only read the Chicago Tribune’s fond tribute once without a subscription) – was an appreciation for commerce and good business sense. Shockingly, the same person who said that encouraged Bob Atcher in his dream to become a professional musician (though this came after some time working on a family ranch in North Dakota).
Atcher made good on the bet, steadily climbing from regional radio platforms (Louisville’s WHAS) to the big, clear-channel national broadcasts that reached half the country. His first truly national platform - a regular radio gig on Chicago’s WBBM starting in 1939 – made him a national star. Mixing old country and folk with “novelty songs,” he scored a string of hits, some as a soloist (e.g., “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and a cover of Ernest Tubbs’ “Walking the Floor Over You,” which I can't find) and several as half of a duet with Loeta Applegate, who performed under the stage-name “Bonnie Blue Eyes.” In fact, their cover of Jimmie Davis’ “You Are My Sunshine” (and the later, “Answer to You Are My Sunshine”) and “Pins and Needles (in My Heart)” were the first things I found; sadly, Applegate doesn’t exist so far as the Internet’s concerned. “Pins and Needles” was the last song Atcher and Applegate recorded before he shipped off for World War, and it stayed in the charts for much of 1943 and became a standard for the war years.
Fans didn’t forget Atcher. He recorded a couple hits after coming back from the war – “Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me” and “I Must Have Been Wrong” – and graduated from a Columbia imprint (the venerable Okeh label) to Columbia’s main label. In 1948, he released one of that label’s earliest long play (LP) records with Early American Folk Songs; the same year saw Atcher sign on as a regular performer for the National Barn Dance on Chicago’s WLS station, aka, the then-big time for country music. He remained a fixture on the show “well into the 1960s” and, after bouncing between Capitol Records and Kapp Records in the 1950s, he returned to Columbia, where he re-recorded many of his old hits in stereo (I included his re-recorded “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” on the sampler to show what that did to his sound).
Something else Atcher did: invest wisely and well. Perhaps more impressively, he went on to turn his business smarts to public service as the mayor of Schaumburg, Illinois from 1959-1975. Atcher moved there in order to be close, but not too close to WLS. To give a sense of the city he moved to, here’s a quote from a 1900 brochure advertising the village:
Atcher made good on the bet, steadily climbing from regional radio platforms (Louisville’s WHAS) to the big, clear-channel national broadcasts that reached half the country. His first truly national platform - a regular radio gig on Chicago’s WBBM starting in 1939 – made him a national star. Mixing old country and folk with “novelty songs,” he scored a string of hits, some as a soloist (e.g., “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” and a cover of Ernest Tubbs’ “Walking the Floor Over You,” which I can't find) and several as half of a duet with Loeta Applegate, who performed under the stage-name “Bonnie Blue Eyes.” In fact, their cover of Jimmie Davis’ “You Are My Sunshine” (and the later, “Answer to You Are My Sunshine”) and “Pins and Needles (in My Heart)” were the first things I found; sadly, Applegate doesn’t exist so far as the Internet’s concerned. “Pins and Needles” was the last song Atcher and Applegate recorded before he shipped off for World War, and it stayed in the charts for much of 1943 and became a standard for the war years.
Fans didn’t forget Atcher. He recorded a couple hits after coming back from the war – “Why Don’t You Haul Off and Love Me” and “I Must Have Been Wrong” – and graduated from a Columbia imprint (the venerable Okeh label) to Columbia’s main label. In 1948, he released one of that label’s earliest long play (LP) records with Early American Folk Songs; the same year saw Atcher sign on as a regular performer for the National Barn Dance on Chicago’s WLS station, aka, the then-big time for country music. He remained a fixture on the show “well into the 1960s” and, after bouncing between Capitol Records and Kapp Records in the 1950s, he returned to Columbia, where he re-recorded many of his old hits in stereo (I included his re-recorded “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” on the sampler to show what that did to his sound).
Something else Atcher did: invest wisely and well. Perhaps more impressively, he went on to turn his business smarts to public service as the mayor of Schaumburg, Illinois from 1959-1975. Atcher moved there in order to be close, but not too close to WLS. To give a sense of the city he moved to, here’s a quote from a 1900 brochure advertising the village:
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| A postcard worthy legacy. |
“Schaumburg has the reputation of being the model community of Cook County. Also, the town of Schaumburg is an example of a community for all other towns in Cook County and probably in other counties, too. Schaumburg is prompt in the payment of its taxes; it supports churches and schools; it has also the best roads in the land and – Schaumburg has never had a jail. Finally, it is not just for the settlers only, but also for foreigners.”
Chicago is in Cook County, of course, and as Atcher watched the then-Second City’s sprawl (e.g., the Tollway and O'Hare Airport) creep ever closer, he decided to do something about it. He stood up a kind of third party called United Schaumburg Party and, inspired by hatred for his own commute on Chicago’s crowded roads, set out to build a community that had everything for its residents including jobs in the community. From Wikipedia’s entry on Schaumburg:
“Early village leaders are credited with the foresight and planning that has made later economic growth possible. The original comprehensive plan adopted by the Village Board in 1961 reserved large tracts of land for industrial, commercial, and office development; mostly the Woodfield area surrounding what is now Woodfield Mall.”
And, to give a sense of the breadth of Atcher et. al.’s vision and how far it reached into the future:
“In the late 1960s, Atcher enacted a then-novel assessment of $100 per unit on developers of multifamily housing. The $2 million raised went to build the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts, which opened in 1986 with a 442-seat theater, gallery and workshop space.”
As noted in the Chicago Tribune “farewell” on his retirement, even political opponents saluted Atcher when he departed back to Kentucky to be closer to extended family in 1989. One of them, Al Larson, said “Schaumburg is a tribute to Atcher.” All that and the only thing they named after him was a public pool...
Atcher passed on Halloween Day in 1993. I don’t get the sense he’s a household name, even among country fans - I only found his name by searching for country music hits of the 1940s – and he scored all the hits he had in the same decade. Still, he struck me as a good entry into how and where people found fame in country music in mid-century America.
Sources
Wikipedia – Bob Atcher
Chicago Tribune article, "Job Done, Schaumburg’s Atcher Rides Into the Sunset" (1989)
Wikipedia – Schaumburg, Illinois
Allmusic short bio
About the Sampler
It’s a small sampler this time, just 12 songs, and I’ve already linked to many of them (and several others) above. The rest I filled out by running the list of his hits on his Wikipedia page against Spotify’s fairly limited library, plus a couple that struck me as useful for giving a sense of what he did.
To start with the hits, those include: “Sorrow on My Mind,” “Crying Myself to Sleep” (though, there, I had to go with the souped-up stereo recording), “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die,” the tuneful mooning, “Time Alone,” and, one of Atcher’s last hits (and one his best, for me), “Tennessee Border.”
And to wrap up with the randos, I included “Blue Tail Fly” as a plausible representative of the LP he recorded for Columbia, and threw on singles like “Mountain Maw,” “Don’t Rob Another Man’s Castle,” and, finally, what I took to be a war-time single with Bonnie Blue Eyes (though she’s not credited on Spotify) “I’m Lending You to Uncle Sammy.”
Till the next one.
Chicago is in Cook County, of course, and as Atcher watched the then-Second City’s sprawl (e.g., the Tollway and O'Hare Airport) creep ever closer, he decided to do something about it. He stood up a kind of third party called United Schaumburg Party and, inspired by hatred for his own commute on Chicago’s crowded roads, set out to build a community that had everything for its residents including jobs in the community. From Wikipedia’s entry on Schaumburg:
“Early village leaders are credited with the foresight and planning that has made later economic growth possible. The original comprehensive plan adopted by the Village Board in 1961 reserved large tracts of land for industrial, commercial, and office development; mostly the Woodfield area surrounding what is now Woodfield Mall.”
And, to give a sense of the breadth of Atcher et. al.’s vision and how far it reached into the future:
“In the late 1960s, Atcher enacted a then-novel assessment of $100 per unit on developers of multifamily housing. The $2 million raised went to build the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts, which opened in 1986 with a 442-seat theater, gallery and workshop space.”
As noted in the Chicago Tribune “farewell” on his retirement, even political opponents saluted Atcher when he departed back to Kentucky to be closer to extended family in 1989. One of them, Al Larson, said “Schaumburg is a tribute to Atcher.” All that and the only thing they named after him was a public pool...
Atcher passed on Halloween Day in 1993. I don’t get the sense he’s a household name, even among country fans - I only found his name by searching for country music hits of the 1940s – and he scored all the hits he had in the same decade. Still, he struck me as a good entry into how and where people found fame in country music in mid-century America.
Sources
Wikipedia – Bob Atcher
Chicago Tribune article, "Job Done, Schaumburg’s Atcher Rides Into the Sunset" (1989)
Wikipedia – Schaumburg, Illinois
Allmusic short bio
About the Sampler
It’s a small sampler this time, just 12 songs, and I’ve already linked to many of them (and several others) above. The rest I filled out by running the list of his hits on his Wikipedia page against Spotify’s fairly limited library, plus a couple that struck me as useful for giving a sense of what he did.
To start with the hits, those include: “Sorrow on My Mind,” “Crying Myself to Sleep” (though, there, I had to go with the souped-up stereo recording), “Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die,” the tuneful mooning, “Time Alone,” and, one of Atcher’s last hits (and one his best, for me), “Tennessee Border.”
And to wrap up with the randos, I included “Blue Tail Fly” as a plausible representative of the LP he recorded for Columbia, and threw on singles like “Mountain Maw,” “Don’t Rob Another Man’s Castle,” and, finally, what I took to be a war-time single with Bonnie Blue Eyes (though she’s not credited on Spotify) “I’m Lending You to Uncle Sammy.”
Till the next one.
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