Early the following year, they began playing at KFBK in Sacramento, and their show was syndicated up and down the West Coast. In addition to playing on KTRB, the group performed at local barns and festivals, and in 1939 they were named the best band at the California State Fair. Fred quickly tired of picking fruit and wrangled a radio spot on KTRB Modesto for his intensely musical family (which featured 11-year-old Rose on decidedly raw lead vocals). It all started in 1933, when the Maddox family - Charlie and Lula, and five of their seven children - hitchhiked and rode the rails from Boaz, Alabama to California, where they worked in the migrant labor camps in the San Joaquin Valley. But throughout the 1940s and '50s, the Maddox Brothers and Sister Rose tore up the honky tonks from the Pacific Northwest to the Gulf Coast with slap-bass boogie and an iconoclastic attitude toward the stiffer mores of conventional country. At that point, the family act broke up, though Rose maintained a successful solo career for many years after. From 1951 until 1956, they recorded for Columbia. On the air in Modesto, California by 1937, the group made their first records for the 4-Star label in 1946. But 'colorful' described their sound as well. It wasn't just a matter of hillbilly couture - though with their matching Turk suits and spangles the family had style in spades. The Maddox Brothers ( Cliff, Cal, Fred, Don, and 'friendly Henry, the working girl's friend') and their sister Rose called themselves 'America's Most Colorful Hillbilly Band.' They weren't kidding.

Maddox brothers series