Notable bluegrass and country music pioneers and artists are included in the second round of inductees into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame.

Among the Hall’s class of ‘08 are Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover, Red Sovine and Charlie McCoy.

Hall of Fame officials announced the new inductees this week during a press conference in the Great Hall of the Cultural Center in Charleston, W. Va.

Wilma Lee Cooper and her late husband Dale “Stoney” Cooper, a champion fiddler, first achieved prominence in the 1940s.

Growing up as Wilma Leigh Leary, she worked as a member of West Virginia’s regionally famed performing Leary Family, developing her celebrated delivery of gospel and devotional songs at the same time. For 40 years the two performed as one of country music’s most popular duos. Their decade-long stints on the “Wheeling Jamboree” and the “Grand Ole Opry” led to recording contracts with both Columbia and Decca.

Wilma Lee, a skillful banjo player, guitarist and organist, wrote or co-wrote several of their most successful compositions including “Cheated Too,” “Loving You,” “I Tell My Heart” and “Heartbreak Street.” The duo’s rousing, old-style jubilee hits of the ’50s and ’60s included “There’s a Big Wheel,” “This Old House” and “Big Midnight Special.”

After Stoney’s death in 1977, she continued performing with her group, the Clinch Mountain Clan, and appeared on the Grand Ole Opry regularly until 2001, when she had a stroke onstage. Although doctors said she would never walk again, in February 2005, during an Opry set hosted by Emmylou Harris, Wilma Lee Cooper walked onto the stage of the Ryman Auditorium to a standing ovation.

The Smithsonian Institution honored Wilma Lee as the “First Lady of Bluegrass” in 1974.

Steeped in the brother-duet tradition of the early 1930s, B and Everett Lilly began performing professionally in 1938, over Beckley, W. Va., radio station WJLS.

With B on guitar and singing lead, Everett played mandolin and usually sang the high tenor part. Everett later took up the fiddle. The pair was soon joined by neighbor and banjo player Don Stover, and their band became popular locally and throughout the South.

Highlighting distinctive and energetic versions of songs initially made popular by the Carter Family and the Monroe Brothers, the trio later played over WCHS radio in Charleston and WWVA in Wheeling. In the early 1950’s, Everett spent two years playing mandolin and singing tenor with Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs.

Then, in 1952, the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover, together with fiddler Tex Logan, accepted an offer in Boston, where they stayed for the next 18 years. Known as the Confederate Mountaineers, they performed as many as seven nights a week in local bars and honky tonks, including the infamous Hillbilly Ranch, as well as the Hayloft Jamboree and the Boston Jamboree.

In 1970, the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover introduced bluegrass music to Japan. They were an immediate sensation and spent several years touring and promoting bluegrass music throughout Japan, where bluegrass and old-time music remain popular today.

The Lilly Brothers and Don Stover retired from professional music in the late 1970s but continued to perform at festivals, concerts, and local events. The Lilly Brothers were inducted into the Massachusetts Country Music Hall of Fame in 1986 and Don Stover was inducted the following year.

In 2002, the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover were inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. Don Stover died in 1996, at age 68. B Lilly died in 2005, at age 83.

Everett Lilly, now 84, continues to play and perform with his sons in a band called Everett Lilly and the Lilly Mountaineers.

Charlie McCoy carries the label of undisputed king of bluegrass and country harmonica. He has been a studio mainstay in Nashville for 39 years – often working as many as 400 sessions a year. He has released 34 albums, and recorded and/or performed with Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Ween, the Steve Miller Band and virtually every classic country artist from George Jones and Johnny Cash to Dolly Parton and Alabama.

A versatile multi-instrumentalist, his work on harmonica, guitar and horns can be heard on seminal Dylan LPs including “John Wesley Harding,’ “Highway 61 Revisited,” “Blond on Blond” and “Nashville Skyline.”

McCoy also served as musical director for the TV show “Hee-Haw” for 19 years.

He has won a Grammy Award, two Country Music Association awards, eight Academy of Country Music awards and has charted more country instrumentals than any artist. Additionally, he has won numerous awards provided by the three music industry trade publications, Billboard, Cash Box and Record World.

In addition to his long list of sessions and his own releases, McCoy was a member of two legendary Nashville bands, Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry. He has toured Europe and Japan regularly since 1989.

Woodrow Wilson “Red” Sovine, best known for sentimental talking numbers like “Giddy-up Go” and “Teddy Bear,” was born in Charleston, W. Va., in 1917.

Inspired by the legendary WCHS radio show and local artists like Buddy Starcher, Sovine appeared on WCHS in Charleston and Wheeling’s WWVA. In 1948, he formed the Echo Valley Boys, moved to Shreveport, La., and began performing on KWKH’s “Louisiana Hayride.” Fellow Hayride performer Hank Williams helped land Sovine a deal with MGM Records.

After releasing 28 singles, another Hayride pal, Webb Pierce, steered Sovine to Decca Records in 1954. Two years later, his first No. 1 hit, a duet with Pierce on a version of George Jones’ “Why Baby Why,” led to Sovine joining the Grand Ole Opry.

But it was in the mid-’70s that Sovine scored his biggest sides, trucker-themed recitations “Phantom 309,” “Truck Driver’s Prayer,” “Teddy Bear” and “Giddy-Up Go.”

Sovine died in Nashville in 1980 after suffering a heart attack.