Minnie Pearl Socks
Description: Minnie Pearl was country music’s premier comedienne for more than fifty years. The long-time Grand Ole Opry star delighted both rural and urban audiences with her down-home brand of humour. Throughout her entire career, the character known as ‘Minnie Pearl’ lived her private life, the epitome of middle-class southern womanhood, as Mrs. Henry Cannon, the wife of a successful Nashville businessman. She took her role of ‘Miss Minnie’ very seriously, working for hours to get the characterisation just right. Alongside her forty-year career on the Grand Ole Opry, she also appeared regularly on Hee Haw in a variety of comic skits, was one of the few country music acts to be featured on NBC’s This Is Your Life, and was a popular chat show guest.
Description: Minnie Pearl's Chicken is a legendary case study of how not to run a restaurant franchising operation, and one that is still frequently referenced today. In the late 1960s, a Nashville entrepreneur persuaded Sarah Cannon, who performed as Minnie Pearl, to lend her name to a chain of fried chicken restaurants established to compete with top national chains. After initially reporting good results and enjoying public stock worth $64 million, the venture collapsed amid allegations of accounting irregularities and stock price manipulation. The company stated it had lost $5.5 million during the first half of 1969, but when the SEC investigated, it noted that the company had lost a whopping $31 million, leaving the stock to fall to just 44 cents.
