Enos William McDonald was born on October 1, 1915, on a small farm near* Greenway, Arkansas. He took to music and to female flesh at an early age. Humble tillers of the soil that they were, his parents, Sam and Ethel, could not afford to buy-their son a maiden, but they did purchase for him a guitar. After finishing high school in 1932, young Skeets—such was the odd name by which our hero would thenceforth till the end of his days be known—bade farewell to his Arkansas home and traveled north, to Michigan, where cars and dreams are made.

With the help of several other displaced rednecks, which were plentiful in that land where cars and dreams were made, Skeets formed his own hillbilly boogie band, the Lonesome Cowboys. By 1937, the Lonesome Cowboys had found steady work with WXEL in Royal Oak. From WXEL the band moved to WFDF in Flint, then to WCAR in Pontiac. But by then, 1943, the world was a wav. In April of that year, Skeets joined the army and, loins girt, shipped out to help save hillbilly boogie from the iron talons of fascism. He returned to Michigan from the Pacific in 1946 and, wearing now a bronze battle star, took up where he had left off.

As the featured vocalist in a five-man group called Johnny White and His Rhythm Riders, Skeets made his first record, in the summer of 1950, for Fortune Records in Detroit. Skeets had written both sides of the record, and the songs were expressions of his curious devotion to the flesh of the lesser sex.

She had a face like a groundhog,

Long, shaggy hair like an ape;

But I loved that woman,

I loverd her for her lovely shape.

Such was his "Mean And Evil Blues." Far more interesting was "The Tattooed Lady," which, in the splendor of its belabored metaphor, is, among all portraits of wondrous Gaea, surpassed only by that in Hesiod's Theogeny.

Once I married a tattooed lady;

It was a cold and winter day.

And tattooed all around her body Was the map of the good old USA; And every night before I'd go to sleep, I'd jerk down the quilt and I'd take a peep:

Upon her butt was West Virginny; through them hills I just love to roam. But when the moon begins to shine down her Wabash,

That's when I remember my Indiana home.

Skeets McDonald moved west to Los Angeles in February, 1951. He called at the office of Cliffie Stone, an ersatz hillbilly who ran the Hometown Jamboree show at KXLA in Pasadena. Stone signed him to perform on the show, then recommended him to Ken Nelson of Capitol Records. Within two weeks, Skeets was signed to the label.

His first hit record for Capitol, "Scoot, Git And Begone," Was released in the late spring of 1951^It did not sell well, nor did its successors: "Today I'm Moving Out," "Ridin' With The Bluest" "Fuss And Fight." The trouble was, these records were not quite like the records being made by the other hillbillies who recorded for Capitol, and the company did not quite know what to do with them.

In early 1952, Skeets took a break from recording, to appear as Johnny Mack Brown's singing sidekick in the Mbnogram movie Smokeless Powder. Returning to the studio, he cut a song called "Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes,'* written by Slim Willet. The record hit the country charts in October, and it eventually rose to Number Two. Since it was a straight, mawkish record that Skeets had now hit with, Capitol was very reluctant to allow him to return to that stranger, louder and more rhythrhic music that he had been recording.

Skeets went through the motion, but there were no more hits, and the singer seemed to come alive only occasionally, as in 1954, when he was permitted to record "Your Love Is Like A Faucet." But by 1956 the Capitol people, like those throughout the industry, were becoming aware of Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins and something called rock 'n' roll. As they became aware of these things, they began to recall those strange records that Skeets McDonald had been making for them back in 1951; and they untethered him. The result was that in 1956 Skeets made some of the best rockabilly records to be heard: "I Got A New Field To Plow" (eat your heart out, Hesiod), "You Oughta See Grandma Rock," and especially "Heart-Breakin' Mama."

But there was a problem. Skeets was now forty years old, overweight, and balding. Capitol signed Gene Vincent, and Skeets McDonald hit the streets.

Late in 1959, after appearing as a regular on Town Hall Party, broadcast from Compton, California by KTTV, Skeets got a contract with Columbia Records in Nashville.

What ensued was a series of pleasant but unexceptional country records, a notch or two above the usual middle-of-the-road Nashville stuff. A few of these Columbia records were successful in a small way: "This Old Heart" (1960), "Call Me Mr. Brown" (1963), "Big Chief Buffalo Nickel" (1965), and "Mabel" (1967) were minor country hits. Another few of them were actually quite good: "You're Not Wicked, You're Just Weak" (1961), "Chin Up, Chest Out" and "Fast Company" (from the 1964album CalTMe Skqets!). But 1956, let alone 1951, was a long time done.

Columbia dropped Skeets in 1967. He made one more record, "It's Genuine," which was released by Uni in early 1968. It was over, all of it, over the lea. The tattooed jady beckoned, but she did not smile.

His heart ceased, and he died, on March 31, 1968. Please, wherever you are, bow your heads for ten minutes of silent praydr.