Villager Margo Smith and daughter Holly Watson, known as the model/ spokesperson for Lexus of Orlando, played to a packed house Sunday evening at Fairway Christian Church in The Villages.
Margo rose to fame in Nashville as the “Tennessee Yodeler” in the 1970s and 1980s.
Margo practiced yodeling as a child and that embedded in her a unique style. She was also a kindergarten teacher who used a ukulele to tame rambunctious children. Margo had a husband and two children when she decided to try her luck in Music City.
Her gamble paid off and with her first album in 1975, she scored a top ten hit with “There I Said It.”
At Sunday’s Christian-music concert, the playful mother-daughter banter gave some insight into their lives.
Margo took to the keyboard and played a feisty, childhood favorite “Pistol Packing Mama.”
Holly told a confessional tale of being a high school graduate who hadn’t found her faith and then found Jesus and was baptized at Panama Beach.
“I came down for a suntan and I found the Son,” she told the audience which numbered about 500.
There were jokes and harmonizing vocals.
And the audience loved it.
“Margo is something else,” said Dennis Storey of the Villages of Hadley. “And then there’s Holly.”
Storey’s wife Rhonda sang with the choir during an intermission in the show.
Holly, who has two boys ages 10 and 5 back in Franklin, Tenn., said she has been proud to be the Lexus or Orlando spokeswoman/model for 15 years.
“They have stayed with me through pregnancies and everything,” she said.
Margo and her husband make their home in the Village of Chatham.
