A Waco-reared vaudeville performer found his fame and fortune among the proudly self-identified “hillbillies” of West Virginia in the 1930s.

William H. “Shorty” Godwin (1889-1959) performed around the South and West as Hiram Hayseed: the Wacky Wag From Waco, a comic persona he created during his long stage career that started in Texas about 1916.

Although he wasn’t born here, he got here as quick as he could. William H. “Shorty” Godwin (1889-1959) performed around the South and West as Hiram Hayseed: the Wacky Wag From Waco, his adopted hometown.
OldHatRecords.com photo

Born on a farm in southern Georgia, Godwin moved with his family to Texas when he was 4. He grew up in the heart of the Central Texas cotton belt.

Emphasizing Waco ties

The sandy-haired, gray-eyed youth apparently never forgot his time in the former Six Shooter Junction; he played off his Waco roots while portraying a country-bumpkin fiddler.

He started his vaudeville stint calling himself the Texas Cotton Picker before he developed the Hayseed character. “Hiram Hayseed” was then a nickname in the popular culture for an unsophisticated rube.

Godwin, who performed as a versatile singer and guitarist as well as portraying a fiddling fool, was already a veteran of show circuits when he recorded two songs for Columbia Phonograph Company in April 1929 .

At the field session in Atlanta, Ga., he accompanied himself on guitar. He recorded “Jimbo Jambo Land,” a Tin Pan Alley spoof of tropical romance, and “Turnip Greens,” a folk song that probably originated in the old minstrel shows of the late 19th century. Columbia had a best-selling hillbilly band at the time, the Skillet-Lickers.

Godwin played two seasons with Otto Grey’s Oklahoma Cowboys and also with Ken Hackley’s Oklahoma Cowboys, before he joined the Doc Williams and the Border Riders cast.

At one time, Godwin was part of the Mack Jeffers group Mack Jeffers and his Fiddlin’ Farmers.

By the Great Depression, Shorty Godwin was broadcasting on WKRC in Cincinnati with George “Sleepy” Jeffers for an act they dubbed Sleepy and Shorty: the Happy Hoedowners.

Move to West Virginia

In 1937, the band moved to WWVA in Wheeling, W. Va., where Godwin popularized his Hiram Hayseed character. When the Fiddling Farmers left the radio station, Godwin stayed on as a featured performer with Doc Williams and His Border Riders, a favorite band on the station’s program called “World’s Original Jamboree.” He remained in Wheeling, performing until his death at age 70 in 1959.

William H.Godwin was born in Georgia and moved to Waco when he was 4.
OldHatRecords.com photo

Williams told later interviewers that he would play straight man to Godwin, as they incorporated old minstrel-show materials by transforming the old blackface routines to clodhopper comedy.

Sources: OldHatRecords.com, Hillbilly-Music.com, “Country Music Humorists and Comedians,” by Loyal Jones, (2008) University of Illinois Press; “Mountaineer Jamboree: Country Music In West Virginia,” by Ivan M. Tribe (1984) University Press of Kentucky; “Mountains of Music: West Virginia Traditional Music from Goldenseal,” by John Lilly (1999) University of Illinois Press.

tjryan@wacotrib.com

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