Joltin' Jim McCoy

Morgan County's Country Music Troubadour

By John Douglas

Singer, songwriter, song publisher, record producer, disc jockey, music store proprietor, club owner - Jim McCoy has done about all there is to do in the country music field.

While he never had a chart-topping song, Jim has managed to make a lifelong career in the hard-tumble music business. He performed all over the country, recorded for a major Nashville label, helped introduce Patsy Cline to the airways, and ran his own record company featuring regional acts from West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.

Now 72, Jim and his wife Bertha own The Troubadour, a nightclub and restaurant on Highland Ridge in the Morgan County countryside near Berkeley Springs. Named in honor of Ernest Tubb, the "Texas Troubadour," the club is decorated with photos and memorabilia from Jim's long career. A barbeque fashioned in the shape of a giant six-shooter is located out back along with a spacious patio, a sloping lawn, and an outdoor stage for live music. The McCoy family lives in a complex of mobile homes nearby.

Just a few hundred feet away, James Wesley McCoy was born on April 11, 1929, to Peter Wesley and Carrie Virginia Henry McCoy.

After a musical career that took him to more than a dozen states, Jim finally moved back to the old homeplace in the mid-1980's.

You can read the rest of this article in the Spring 2002 issue of Goldenseal, available in bookstores, libraries or direct from Goldenseal.