Jim Bob Tinsley (Aug. 12,1921), who, in his early years, was a working cowboy in Arizona and Florida, began performing Western music on radio station WWNC in Asheville, N.C. in 1935. In the 1940s he performed with a number of radio and movie stars, including Gene Autry. SONG OF THE WEST magazine (summer 1993) recounts the wonderful story of how he sang "You Are my Sunshine" in an impromptu duet with Sir Winston Churchill when he stopped to hear Jim Bob play, when Churchill was en route to the Casablanca Conference in 1943. In 1989, Jim Bob was a consultant for Michael Martin Murphey during the preparations for Murphey's landmark album COWBOY SONGS, and he also performed on the album.

Jim Bob's collection of Western artifacts is on display in his museum in the North Carolina mountains and two of his many scholarly books on cowboy and western music, HE WAS SINGIN' THIS SONG and FOR A COWBOY HAS TO SING, published by the University of Central Florida Press, are among the most important pieces of literature on the genre.

He has received the Western Heritage Wrangler Award (in 1982), the Pioneer Award from the National Radio Heritage Assn., Council Bluffs, Iowa (in 1984) and was the second inductee into the National Cowboy Song and Poetry Hall of Fame.

by O.J. Sikes

Jim Bob Tinsley, was born in Brevard, North Carolina on August 12, 1921, and was educated in Transylvania County Schools, The University of Florida, and Arizona State College at Flagstaff. He served four years as an aerial photographer with the U.S. Navy in North Africa, Sicily and Italy during World War II.

Jim Bob enjoyed a long career as an educator in public schools and researched and authored definitive books on the Florida Puma and Sailfish. However, he remained focused on two favorite subjects, Transylvania County waterfalls and cowboy-western music.

For all his adult life Jim Bob has photographed waterfalls of Transylvania County, researched their history and collected anecdotal materials. During the same time period he collected, performed and preserved western music and memorabilia. He received many awards and honors for his lifetime work.

Unfortunately, Jim Bob passed away on January 18, 2004. The Jim Bob Tinsley Museum provides free public access to the lifelong collections of Jim Bob and his wife Dottie, shown with him here.

Taken from the Jim Bob Tinsley Museum and Transylvania County Heritage Center's Site