Lee Aubrey "Speed" Riggs

Lee Aubrey “Speed” Riggs (February 18, 1907 – February 1, 1987) was an American tobacco auctioneer in Durham, North Carolina, United States. For more than three decades, Riggs appeared on the radio shows Your Lucky Strike Hit Parade and The Lucky Strike Program with Jack Benny for the American Tobacco Company as the voice of Lucky Strike cigarettes. Riggs' career came to an end in 1969, when the United States Federal Trade Commission banned tobacco advertising over all forms of broadcast media.

Later in life, Riggs moved to California and started “Your Community Fund,” a nonprofit with the mission to teach handicapped children various labor skills. Riggs is remembered today as a public figure and star performer of the 1940s and 1950s, having gained fame as part of the last generation of mass media tobacco advertisers.

Biography

Early years

Lee Aubrey Riggs was born on February 18, 1907, in Silverdale, North Carolina — a small community in rural Onslow County. His father, Mark, worked as a tobacco farmer, and in 1921 the entire family moved to Goldsboro, North Carolina, where Mark planted his own tobacco patch and established a truck farming business. Riggs attended school until the sixth grade, when assisting his father in the fields forced him to drop out.

Riggs, however, never gained the same satisfaction growing crops as his father. Riggs discovered his passion while visiting the Faison Produce Auction in Sampson County, North Carolina, where he was awed by the antics and rapid-fire chants of the auctioneers. At just 14 years old, Riggs remembered mimicking the “staccato style…humming Yankee Doodle.” By practicing at such a young age, he trained himself to speak at the staggering pace of 469 words per minute, which was thought to be a world record at the time.

Legacy While his fame no longer matched that of the 1940s and 1950s, the tobacco industry still hailed him for his many contributions. On February 27, 2003, Riggs was inducted into the North Carolina Agricultural Hall of Fame. Today Riggs is no longer a household name, it is said that whenever an auctioneer throws a bit of zest and style into their chant, it is quite likely mimicking Speed Riggs.

Footnotes

Sources consulted

“Smoking & Tobacco Use,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed March 22, 2014, https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/by_topic/policy/legislation/ Billy Yeargin, North Carolina Tobacco (The History Press, 2008), 52–57. “Lee Aubrey ‘Speed’ Riggs,” North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, accessed March 14, 2014, http://www.ncagr.gov/paffairs/aghall/riggs.htm. Paul Houston, “Auctioneer Sells Whole Industry,” Los Angeles Times, September 14, 1981. Charles Gerena, “Sold, American!,” Region Focus 8.2 (2004), 36–39. Jennifer Dawn Farley, Duke Homestead and The American Tobacco Company (Arcadia Publishing, 2013)?. “Liberty Warehouse,” Open Durham, accessed April 10, 2014, http://www.opendurham.org/buildings/liberty-warehouse-no-3 K.L. Lum, J.R. Polansky, R.K. Jackler, and S.A. Glantz, “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: “Big Tobacco” in Hollywood,” Tobacco Control (2008): 313–323. Allan Brandt, Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product (Basic Books, 2007), 74–75.