SELPH, LEON [PAPPY] (1914–1999). Leon "Pappy" Selph, honky-tonk fiddler and a "founding father" of honky-tonk music, was born on April 7, 1914, in Houston to Lee and Alvenie Selph. He began playing the violin at the age of seven, played with the Houston Youth Symphony when he was fourteen, and joined W. Lee O'Daniel's^qv Light Crust Doughboys^qv in 1931, when he was seventeen. Although O'Daniel paid Selph $20 a week to play for the band, the fiddler's primary duty was to teach the Doughboys, who could not read music, one new song a week to perform on their radio show. Bob Wills^qv was one of his students. When Wills moved to Waco to form the Texas Playboys, Selph joined him. Selph stayed with the Playboys until Wills moved the band to Tulsa in 1934, then moved back to Houston and formed his own band, the Blue Ridge Playboys. The group, which included legendary musicians Floyd Tillman, Moon Mullican,^qv and Ted Daffon,^qv signed with Columbia Records in 1938 and achieved some regional success with recordings that included "Give Me My Dime Back" and the classic "Orange Blossom Special." From the 1930s until World War II^qv the Blue Ridge Playboys had their own national radio show on KPRC in Houston. The show was canceled at the outbreak of the war, when Selph enlisted in the navy. After the war he returned to Houston and joined the Houston Fire Department, where he worked for the next thirty years. After he retired in 1972, he formed another band, with which he toured the Soviet Union and served as a cultural ambassador for the State Department. He continued to play local venues around Texas until his death on January 8, 1999, in Houston. Selph and his wife, Inez, had two sons and two daughters. In 1996 he was inducted into the Texas Western Swing Hall of Fame.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dallas Morning News, January 11, 1999. Houston Chronicle, June 27, 1985; June 5, 1991; January 10, 1999. The Independent (London) January 16, 1999.

James Head