Leonard B. Ledford

GEDCOM Note

Pastor Leonard B. "Buck" Ledford was born on January 30th, 1922 in Yancey County, North Carolina [1].

He was apparently born as Leonard J. King but changed his name after he was saved by Christ, taking on his mother's maiden name. He joined the army in January 1940; while in Jackson, SC he was sent to the hospital for appendicitis, at which time he went AWOL for 13 days. Upon returning to camp, he discovered that his unit had been moved to Fort Sill, in Oklahoma. After being put in "the stockade" for about 2 weeks, the army gave him a ticket to Ft. Sill and told him to meet back up with his unit; instead, he returned to Weaversville, saying he was homesick and tired of army life.

After some time in Weaversville, Ledford left for Knoxville, where he got a job working with the Happy Valley Boys (the incarnation of The Bailey Brothers created after Charlie Bailey joined the military) starting around October 1941, before the US joined World War II [2]. While with the Happy Valley Boys, he played on WROL, playing sacred and hillbilly songs with the band both on the radio and in local schoolhouses; he also conducted revival meetings in rural communities. During that time he was twice drafted and rejected from military service for being unfit to serve.

In 1943, he married his wife, Elva Lee Ledford (née Lane), who was born in Robbinsville, North Carolina on June 11th, 1925 [3]. After getting married, he returned to Robbinsville, where he got a job working with the Tennessee Valley Authority at Fontana Dam before working as a farm hand and eventually getting his license to preach in March 1945. By October he was pastor of the Atoah Free Will Baptist Church [4]. He was arrested briefly for his desertion a month after the surrender of Japan [5].

Though I wasn't able to find how long Buck was arrested, he was free and preaching again by 1949, at which point he was living in Andrews, NC; while there, he helped officiate funerals and guest preached at local churches around the area [6]. He appears to have moved to Maryville by 1951 [7].

Buck helped found Victory Baptist Church in Maryville circa 1951 [8], a few years after starting his gospel music radio program, "The Soul Winning Gospel Hour," which ran for 55 years. The earliest I found Ledford specifically mentioned as a solo radio performer was in April 1951 on Versaille's WVLK; the first time I found his program specifically referred to by name was on Lenoir City's recently-founded WLIL in June 1953 [9]. After 7 years of pastoring Victory Baptist, he helped build and found Morning Star Baptist Church.

For much of the 1950s, Ledford continued as a preacher and a funeral officiator, though he did also join a group of Baptists who rejected the new Revised Standard Version (RSV) Bible (the group wrote that the RSV contained "blasphemous statements" [10]%29 and also helped found the East Tennessee Youth For Christ group in 1955 [11]. 1955 was also the first year I found any mention of Ledford's former singing career, where in an add for a Baptist Youth for Christ meeting he was described as "formerly a hillbilly singer." This was important, as the meetings were centered around creating fellowship via gospel readings and hymn singing [12]. Despite his singing background, many of the revival meetings Ledford led had the singing done by other groups rather than Ledford himself.

The earliest evidence I found of that changing was in 1957, when an ad for Ledford's Soul Saving Gospel Hour implored readers to "Tell Your Friends To Tune In For Good Singing And The Word Of God" [13]. By the following year, Ledford was helping host a series of revival meetings throughout Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina alongside his radio show, and was no longer formally the pastor of Victory Baptist Church; by September 14th, Ledford had founded and was pastoring Morning Star Baptist Church (also in Maryville), which he pastored for 38 years [14].

In 1960, Ledford sang with the Morning Star Quartet for a special service held to benefit the Tri-State Children's Home in Bristol, Tennessee; around this time, ads for his revivals also more frequently mentioned "special singings" alongside the services, though that doesn't necessarily mean previous ones didn't include any singing, or even that Ledford sang [15]. He also lessened the number of funerals he officiated (though he did not stop entirely) and spent the majority of his time leading revival meetings and preaching; he continued performing with the Morning Star Quartet (or other groups generally and unhelpfully called "his singers") through the mid-1960s.

By 1963, Ledford's radio program was gaining popularity; it was carried on 6 radio stations in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, as well as at least one station in the British West Indies [16] The following year was the first mention I found of Buck Ledford performing specifically with his wife; the paper advised its readers that "He and Mrs. Ledford will be singing the old songs of our Lord" [17]

Miscellaneous fun fact, but Buck Ledford was the uncle to singer-songwriter Malcolm Holcombe, who remembered him as one of his main influences to start playing guitar and singing [18].

Buck Ledford passed away on November 22nd, 2002 (age 80) in Maryville, Tennessee; his wife passed on September 9th, 2007 (age 82) also in Maryville, Tennessee.

Unfortunately, I could find no information regarding any of their musical releases, which I will discuss in a subsequent post.