Riley Shepard

American country musician, songwriter, and folk music archivist. Born October 21, 1918 in New Hanover (near Wilmington), North Carolina. Died November 6, 2009. As a songwriter, he charted in 1948 with "Who? Me?" by Tex Williams (co-written by Williams). The song hit #6 in 1948 on the U.S. country charts. Riley started out playing songs in minstrel shows, known as "Lanky Bill", a black-face character he entertained audiences as in the middle 1930s. Soon, he was getting gigs with hillbilly groups like the Dixie Reelers. He'd often used different stage names or pseudonyms with different labels. He performed as Dick Scott, Hicky Free, Klym Hawley, Johnny Rebel, Dickson Hall and Riley Cooper. He also used pseudonyms for songwriting including Jean Gilmore, Dick Gleason, Hicky Free, Paul Lester, Richard Alexander, Albert Reilly, Jo Graham, Richard James Hauck, Ben Thomas, Zachary Quill and more. He had a regular radio spot on Philadelphia's "Hayloft Hoedown", a show that later went national. He was the host of the Oklahoma Roundup in Oklahoma City on network broadcast in 1947. ASCAP IP# 28522493 (601686460). In the 1960s, Shepard relocated to California, and embarked upon a decades-long project to develop a comprehensive encyclopedia of folk music. By 1976, he had single-handedly catalogued and coded more than 43,000 folk songs, along with their derivative works and variant lyrics. His comprehensive cross-referencing scheme demonstrated that the 43,000 titles originate from just 4,000 songs, texts and tunes.