Minnie Pearl was the stage name of Sarah Ophelia Colley Cannon (October 25, 1912 - March 4, 1996). She was a country comedienne who appeared frequently on the Grand Ole Opry, and on the television show Hee Haw from 1970 to 1991. She was known for wearing a big hat with a price tag ($1.98) hanging off the side.

Colley was born in Centerville, Tennessee. She graduated from what was then Nashville, Tennessee's most prestigious school for young ladies, Ward-Belmont. Her family, relatively affluent by the standards of the area and the day, was somewhat scandalized by her entry into "show business", and at first her involvement was more as a booking agent, business manager, and facilitator than as a performer.

As a performer, her comedy was always a rather gentle and loving satire of her hometown of Centerville, about fifty miles (eighty km) west of Nashville in Hickman County. Her trademark opener was always, "Howdeeee! I'm just so proud to be here!" delivered at what seemed to have been the top of her lungs. (Once she was an established star, her audience almost invariably shouted "Howdeeee!" back to her.) Her monologues almost always involved her comical relatives, notably "Uncle Nabob" and "Brother", who was somehow both slow-witted and wise in a way, simultaneously. She called her hometown in her act "Grinders Switch", a real location just outside of Centerville which consisted of little more than the eponymous railroad switch; those who knew her knew that the characters were largely based on real residents of Centerville. (So much unwarranted traffic to Grinder's Switch looking for the hometown she described was generated by tourists following the road sign that the Hickman County Highway Department was finally motivated to change the designation on the sign to "Hickman Springs Road". Attempts over the years to develop a "Grinder's Switch" theme park have proven futile.) Her character was always presented as a man-hungry spinster willing to settle for almost anything in the way of male companionship; in real life she was happily married for many years to Henry Cannon.

In the late 1960s, Mrs. Cannon was convinced to allow her name to be associated with a chain of fried-chicken restaurants in competition with Kentucky Fried Chicken by Nashville entrepreneur John Jay Hooker. At first the stock price of this venture soared; later it collapsed amid allegations of accounting irregularities and stock price manipulation. This affair was throughly investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission; Miss Pearl/Mrs. Cannon was found to have been completely uninvolved in any alleged wrongdoing, but was considerably embarrassed by the negative publicity surrounding her name. (A small number of these restaurants actually survived into the 1980s in the Middle Tennessee area.)

As noted above, Mrs. Cannon portrayed the Minnie Pearl character for many years on the perennial Saturday-night television cornfest Hee Haw, both on the original network and subsequent syndicated versions. This may have been less taxing than it would appear; the program was shot entirely in Nashville and totally out of sequence, so that each performer could record all of his or her appearances for an entire television season in a matter of a few days or parts of days.

Cannon was fairly influential in the lives of many younger country artists, taking something of a maternal interest in them, especially Hank Williams, but also may of the younger generation of female singers; she had seen many of the inequities in the treatment of women in business in general, and women in the country music industry in particular, first-hand. She was also a close friend of Paul Reubens aka Pee-Wee Herman. In her later years she lived in a prestigious Nashville neighborhood next to the Governor's Mansion, where she befriended several of the governors. After surviving breast cancer through aggressive treatments including mastectomy and radiation therapy, she became a spokeswoman for the medical center in Nashville where she had been treated and somewhat for cancer survivors in general. She took on this role as herself, Sarah Ophelia Cannon, not desiring the Minnie Pearl character to be associated with such misfortune, although the center where she was treated was later named the "Minnie Pearl Cancer Center", incorporating her better-known stage name.

Her death at the age of 83 was brought on by complications due to a stroke. During her time in the nursing home she was visited frequently by numerous country music industry figures, notably Vince Gill and Amy Grant, whose romantic relationship is alleged to have begun during joint visits to see her. She is buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Franklin, Tennessee.

External link

• Minnie Pearl biography