By Dale McGarrigle, Of the Bangor Daily News Staff 
Friday, March, 24, 2000
 

 Jackie King doesn't consider herself a Maine country music pioneer. Even after 41 years in the business, she still perceives herself as just the girl singer in the band.
 Those behind Maine's Country Music Pioneer Show felt otherwise, naming the East Holden woman its honoree this year. The 15th annual show will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday at Cony High School in Augusta.
 Among those on the bill for the event are the Gene Hooper Family, Yodelin' Slim Clark, Doc Morrill and Tim Farrell. While many of the performers are King's contemporaries, she considers such musicians as Hal Lone Pine, Curly and Bob O'Brien, and Dick Curless to be those who paved the way.
 "I'll always remember each and every one of them, especially when I do the Pioneer Show, [because] spiritually they are all with me on that stage," she said.
 King, 60, would accept that she was a pioneer in local television, as she appeared with her late husband, Curly O'Brien, for more than 20 years on two Bangor stations.
 It's hard to believe this quiet woman is equally at home on the stage. But King said she has several personalities.
 "There's the modest and humble me," she said. "But when I get up to perform, something happens."
 King's love of music can be traced back to her large Franco-American family, whose Millinocket home was always filled with song. She and her friend Ethel McDougall became the harmonizing King Sisters.
 After high school, McDougall got married, and King found herself solo. It was then that she met the man who would become her mentor, Curly O'Brien. He heard her sing, and invited her to join his "Tops Hands" TV show, then airing on WLBZ TV (Channel 2)  opposite "Captain Kangaroo" and pioneering morning-show host Dave Garroway.
 First, King had to convince her parents to let her go.
 "My parents were reluctant for me to go 'way to Bangor' for a job, and Dad said he didn't think it was a real job," she recalled. "But they let me go anyway, being certain that I would be boarding with an elderly lady who turned out to be stricter than my mother."
 Going from the shadow of Mount Katahdin to the TV studio was quite a thrill for the young King.
 "It was fun," she recalled. "I'd been this farmgirl, and now I had to get up in front of all these machines. My father, who really didn't understand what I was doing, likened it to going to Hollywood. I met a lot of beautiful people, and made a lot of friends."
 King, who soon became O'Brien's bass player, and Tim Farrell, then a young fiddler on the show, found O'Brien to be a stern taskmaster.
 "He was a tough teacher," she said. "He'd say, 'I don't care how you feel. You get up there and smile.' Tim was going to quit, then he changed his mind, and said, 'I'm going to get 
 better just to spite him."'
 King and O'Brien fell in love and married. They were together for 33 years, and had four children and seven grandchildren. Their show stayed on WLBZ for 10 years, then they moved to upstart WVII (Channel 7) in 1966.
 "That was another learning experience, because they didn't have a lot of good equipment," King reminisced. "A lot of young people learning the trade came through and practiced on the show. That's why it's so sad that there's so few shows done locally anymore."
 In addition to the TV gig, the band would be performing three to four nights a week.
 "That's when the little halls were fun to play, when shows were family things," she said. "It's so cold in these big halls now. You can't even see the first row."
 "The Curly O'Brien Show" went off the air in 1980, two years after his health had begun to deteriorate. He couldn't attend the final show, in which many of the musicians who had played with him returned for a tribute.
 "He had a stroke and emphysema," King remembered. "It was the result of a lifetime of not living too good. The men in show business didn't take care of themselves well."
 For the next decade, King put her music aside, to care for her ailing husband until his death in 1990.
 "We thought it was over, and he had to retire," she said. "I wasn't ready to, but that was my job. I don't want to sound like a saint. It's just the way we were raised. He was a difficult man to care for. He got really bitter because he couldn't get out and perform. He was good at what he did, and he went to the very end without realizing how people felt about him."
 But Jackie King's story has a second chapter.
 She began playing again in 1991, after Charlie and Marilyn Brown asked her to play bass in their traditional country band. Before long, she was the "girl singer" again.
 "I would step to the mike, and people would stop and listen," she said. "That instant recognition would give me goosebumps."
 Also King is engaged, to Dutch Heiser, a longtime disc jockey now at country radio station WMCM (103.3 FM) in Rockland, with the wedding planned for June 17. Heiser, who once played drums for O'Brien, had lost his wife in a car crash.
 "I swore I wouldn't get married again, especially to another entertainer," King said. "But we've both had our losses. He also shares my weird sense of humor."
 At this point in her career, the benefits of performing aren't monetary for King.
 "The biggest reward is having somebody come up and say that they remembered me from the TV show," she said. "True country fans are loyal. They miss the homey feel of the traditional music."