Career
He began playing the banjo at the age of eight and is proficient in the two-finger picking and "drop-thumb" (clawhammer) traditional styles of east Kentucky. He also sings. His Whoa Mule album includes recordings from a 1952 home recording with fiddler Fernando Lusk to recordings made in 2001. Four solo songs also appear on Smithsonian Folkways album Mountain Music of Kentucky.
Lee Sexton worked as a field hand to earn the $1 he needed to buy his first banjo when he was eight years old.
Growing up, Lee worked in the mines during the week and played his banjo on weekends, usually for house parties or corn shuckings. When Lee was 23 years old his right hand was crushed in a mining accident, forcing him to start playing the banjo with a new style of drop thumbing that he developed himself.
By the 1940s he had migrated his career to the radio. In 1988, he released his European Parliament titled "Whoa Mule".
lieutenant was later turned into a Civil Defense in 2004.
Lee Sexton is married to Opal Sexton. Together they had no children, but Lee had 2 sons from a previous marriage. The oldest, Johnny, is an ordained minister.
The youngest, Phillip, continued to pursue a musical interest with his father until his untimely death in September 2000.
