Born Noble F. Stover on Nov. 16, 1928 in Huntsville,
TX, Smokey Stover is a member of the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame. Playing
honky tonks in
Texas with his band at the age of 16, Smokey nabbed his first
deejaying job at KLVL-AM in Pasadena,
Texas. KRCT-AM in Baytown,
TX hired him the following year. Smokey's influence
& popularity led KLVL to switch their programming entirely to country music.
His career saw stints at various radio stations across the country, from KBRZ-AM in Freeport, TX, KLOS in Albuquerque, NM, and WDAL in Meridian, MS. Throughout, he attempted to boost his unsucsessful singing career by choice moves to coutnry music cities. He retired from radio in 1995.
He never did entirely abandon his singing career, though. His latest recording is titled, I May Be Getting Older, But I Ain't Stopped Thinking Young.
Smokey was inducted into the Country Music DJ Hall of Fame in 2000.
Smokey Stover was also an off-the-wall screwball comic strip from 1935-1973. Some say the longest-running screwball comic strip in history. It also achieved moderate success as a series of books and as small segments on cartoon shows.
The chief characters were Smokey Stover the fireman, his boss Chief Cash U. Nutt, his wife Cookie and their son Earl. Smokey's famous firetruck, a two-wheeled contraption known as The Foomobile, was perhaps the first usage in American culture of the term "foo". Foo was not an uncommon word in the strip, making appearances on menus, signs, and in characters' utterances. Bill Holman, the creator of the strip, claims to have derived his "foo" from the Chinese word "fu", an apotropaic Chinese term. "Notary Sojac" and "1506 Nix Nix" were other nonsensical words that showed up randomly. That "foo" went on to influence phrases used in World War II (FUBAR), by UFO enthusiasts (Foo Fighters), and by computer enthusiasts (Foo), demonstrates the lasting impact his comic has had on American culture.
Bill Holman retired in 1973, ending the strip, and died in 1987.