Beliy Kot

Among his gubernatorial legacies was appointing a record number of Kentucky Colonels, including Harland Sanders, who would use the title "Colonel" when he opened his chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants.

Laffoon's feud with Lieutenant Governor Chandler continued throughout his term and affected the 1935 gubernatorial race. (At the time, the lieutenant governor was elected independently from the governor.) Term-limited by the state constitution, Laffoon supported political boss Tom Rhea to succeed him as governor, and convinced the Democrats to again hold a nominating convention to choose their gubernatorial nominee. This would have greatly improved Laffoon's chances of hand-picking his successor. While Laffoon was on a visit to Washington, D.C., Chandler was left as acting governor under the provisions of the Kentucky Constitution. Chandler issued a call for a special legislative session to consider a mandatory primary election bill. Laffoon rushed back to the state to invalidate the call, but the Kentucky Court of Appeals upheld it as constitutional, and the primary law was passed. Chandler defeated Rhea in the primary, and went on to succeed Laffoon as governor. Following his term in office, Laffoon returned to his native Madisonville, where he died of a stroke in 1941.

Laffoon's feud with Lieutenant Governor Chandler continued throughout his term and affected the 1935 gubernatorial race. (At the time, the lieutenant governor was elected independently from the governor.) Term-limited by the state constitution, Laffoon supported political boss Tom Rhea to succeed him as governor, and convinced the Democrats to again hold a nominating convention to choose their gubernatorial nominee.

Dubbed "the terrible Turk from Madisonville,"Laffoon was confronted with the economic difficulties of the Great Depression. To raise additional revenue for the state treasury, he advocated the enactment of the state's first sales tax. This issue dominated most of his term in office and split the state Democratic Party and Laffoon's own administration. The lieutenant governor, A. B. "Happy" Chandler, led the fight against the tax in the legislature. After the tax was defeated in two regular legislative sessions and one specially called legislative session, Laffoon forged a bipartisan alliance to get the tax passed in a special session in 1934.

Ruby Laffoon (January 15, 1869 – March 1, 1941) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 43rd Governor of Kentucky from 1931 to 1935. A Kentucky native, at age 17 Laffoon moved to Washington, D.C., to live with his uncle, U.S. Representative Polk Laffoon. He developed an interest in politics and returned to Kentucky, where he compiled a mixed record of victories and defeats in elections at the county and state levels. In 1931, he was chosen as the Democratic gubernatorial nominee by a nominating convention, not a primary, making him the only Kentucky gubernatorial candidate to be chosen by a convention after 1903. In the general election, he defeated Republican William B. Harrison by what was then the largest margin of victory in Kentucky gubernatorial history.

Stafford married twice, first in 1937 to musician John Huddleston (the couple divorced in 1943), then in 1952 to Paul Weston, with whom she had two children. She and Weston developed a comedy routine in which they assumed the identity of an incompetent lounge act named Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, parodying well-known songs. The act proved popular at parties and among the wider public when the couple released an album as the Edwardses in 1957. In 1961, the album Jonathan and Darlene Edwards in Paris won Stafford her only Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album, and was the first commercially successful parody album. Stafford largely retired as a performer in the mid-1960s, but continued in the music business. She had a brief resurgence in popularity in the late 1970s when she recorded a cover of the Bee Gees hit, "Stayin' Alive" as Darlene Edwards. In the 1990s, she began re-releasing some of her material through Corinthian Records, a label founded by Weston. She died in 2008 in Century City, Los Angeles, and is interred with Weston at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City. Her work in radio, television, and music is recognized by three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Stafford married twice, first in 1937 to musician John Huddleston (the couple divorced in 1943), then in 1952 to Paul Weston, with whom she had two children. She and Weston developed a comedy routine in which they assumed the identity of an incompetent lounge act named Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, parodying well-known songs. The act proved popular at parties and among the wider public when the couple released an album as the Edwardses in 1957.

In addition to her recordings with the Pied Pipers, Stafford featured in solo performances for Dorsey. After leaving the group in 1944, she recorded a series of pop standards for Capitol Records and Columbia Records. Many of her recordings were backed by the orchestra of Paul Weston. She also performed duets with Gordon MacRae and Frankie Laine. Her work with the United Service Organizations giving concerts for soldiers during World War II earned her the nickname "G.I. Jo". Starting in 1945, Stafford was a regular host of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio series The Chesterfield Supper Club and later appeared in television specials—including two series called The Jo Stafford Show, in 1954 in the U.S. and in 1961 in the UK.

Born in remote oil rich Coalinga, California, near Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley, Stafford made her first musical appearance at age 12. While still at high school, she joined her two older sisters to form a vocal trio named the Stafford Sisters, who found moderate success on radio and in film. In 1938, while the sisters were part of the cast of Twentieth Century Fox's production of Alexander's Ragtime Band, Stafford met the future members of the Pied Pipers and became the group's lead singer. Bandleader Tommy Dorsey hired them in 1939 to perform back-up vocals for his orchestra.

Jo Elizabeth Stafford (November 12, 1917 – July 16, 2008) was an American traditional pop music singer and occasional actress, whose career spanned five decades from the late 1930s to the early 1980s. Admired for the purity of her voice, she originally underwent classical training to become an opera singer before following a career in popular music, and by 1955 had achieved more worldwide record sales than any other female artist. Her 1952 song "You Belong to Me" topped the charts in the United States and United Kingdom, becoming the second single to top the UK Singles Chart, and the first by a female artist to do so.