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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:
