ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 4, 1996 TAG: 9609040020
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Little King Joe has reigned over road and school shows, fairs and a three-year syndicated television show that seemed to be a cross between "The Muppets" and "Hee-Haw."
Now he reigns over Dummyland, a museum in a 19th-century log building on Wytheville's Main Street.
Little King Joe has had five bodies, but one voice - that of ventriloquist Liz LaMac, who grew up in Spencer, W.Va., but spent most of her life in Nashville, Tenn., where she hobnobbed with other entertainers such as Dolly Parton, Roy Acuff, Archie Campbell, Jerry Clower, Ed Asner, Marie Osmond, Lew DeWitt, Pee Wee King and others whose photographs cover one of the museum's walls.
Joe is not the only dummy whose voice she provided. The museum also houses dummies Uncle Mud and his brother Dud, twins Esmarelda and Isabella, and a buck-toothed rabbit named Billy Jack. LaMac brought all of them to life in her TV series, "King Joe's Palace."
The dummies on the show were supplemented by other characters played by actual people, like the Snooty Duchess of Durham, a cook named Matilda Elderberry and, of course, Lady Liz herself.
"I wrote the scripts for 130 shows that we did," said LaMac. "I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning until I wrote 20 jokes."
Her husband and manager, Mack Boggs, would bring her breakfast while she was writing. He also got her "Roving Studio" radio show syndicated on more than 40 stations, arranged the tours of her Sugar Daddies band, and otherwise orchestrated her career.
While doing all this, LaMac also wrote some 60 little booklets with titles such as "Remember What Mom Said," "That's Tacky" and "The Out-House Blues," along with fables, recipes and children's stories, all of which are on sale in her shop on the opposite side of the museum.
"And I have at least 100 in the files upstairs waiting to get printed," LaMac said. "Out-House Blues" is by far her biggest seller. "We can't keep it in print."
The shop also boasts antiques, old magazines, rare books and a variety of other items, including audio tapes from LaMac's radio show and her videotaped lessons on ventriloquism.
Admission to the museum is $2 for adults and $1 for children. The tour includes the various dummies and props from the TV show, a dining room table that once belonged to President Warren G. Harding and videos of the 30-minute "King Joe's Palace" TV shows, which are shown to visitors touring the museum.
LaMac and Boggs moved into their Wytheville quarters this year after living in a Christiansburg housing development last year. They had decided to move to a busier location after feeling isolated by last winter's big snows. LaMac said she looks at visitors to her shop and museum as guests in her home and enjoys playing hostess.
One fan is a boy who comes across the street from the neighboring Saint Mary's Catholic Church to watch a different show each time.
"We had quite a following. The fan club was close to 4,000," Boggs said.
The show's resemblance to the sketches on "Hee-Haw" are no accident. LaMac attended so many tapings of "Hee-Haw" to see how they created the show that the producers finally got her a chair of her own.
Visitors can also learn some inside stuff about the celebrities pictured on the museum walls. The photo of Dolly Parton standing by LaMac makes them look equally tall, until LaMac points out Parton's extremely high platform heels. Archie Campbell turns out to have been something of an artist, as well as a musician, as shown by a barn sketch he gave to LaMac. And Minnie Pearl is shown at the opening of her museum in Nashville, chatting away with Little King Joe.
"It takes over. People talk to him and don't speak to me," LaMac said with a laugh.
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL DELLINGER/Staff. Ventriloquist Liz LaMac and herby CNBdummy, Little King Joe. color.