Cousin Herb's widow

It was a long before my time, and perhaps long before yours, but the first family of Bakersfield back in the mid-1950s was”Cousin” Herb Henson and his wife Katherine.

His daily, 45-minute TV show, “Cousin’s Herb’s Trading Post,” was on KERO-TV from 1953 to 1963. Henson, flanked by co-stars Bill Woods and Billy Mize, became a favorite throughout the valley, thanks to a signal that boosted the program well past Fresno and all the way over to the coast.

His list of guest stars over the years reads like a Music Row telephone book; Merle Haggard once called him the Ralph Emery of Bakersfield. KUZZ-FM traces its call-letter lineage to the time Henson signed on as general manager of the station formerly known as KIKK and took to calling himself “Kuzzin” Herb.

Henson died of a heart attack on Nov. 26, 1963, four days after John F. Kennedy’s assassination. He was just 38.

Now comes word that Henson’s widow, Katherine Henson Dopler, is in hospice care back in Eufaula, Okla. Eldest son Mike Henson says she is 79 and suffers from emphysema.

The update on Cousin Herb’s family comes in a roundabout fashion. Last week, I picked up the new CD by the alt-country band Wilco, “Wilco (the album),” featuring “Wilco (the song).” No, I am not making that up.

I was reminded that Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy once told an interviewer that he came from authentic country-music stock: He’s related to Cousin Herb. Tweedy was born and raised in Belleville, Ill., and Cousin Herb was from East St. Louis, Ill., about 15 miles west.

I called Mike Henson for a review of his cousin’s latest recording and got the news about his mother — at which point his review didn’t seem to matter much. But he is proud that his cousin (third, he concluded) is making music so famously. So that particular branch of the Bakersfield Sound lives on, albeit based in Chicago.