ROOTS of Country Music

Smoky Mountain Boys (L-R) Lonnie Wilson, Jess Easterday, Roy Acuff, Rachel Veach, Pete "Oswald" Kirby

The Professional Work of Roy Acuff

(Sep. 15, 1903 ~ Nov. 23, 1992)

Career Highlights

Barn Dance Affiliate: Louisiana Hayride

Grand Ole Opry Member -1938

Band Names

• Crazy Tennesseeans
• Smoky Mountain Boys

Film, Night Club, Radio & TV

• Austin City Limits, 4
• Billy Bob's Texas, 2
• Ernest Tubb’s  Midnight Jamboree, 3
• Gilley’s Club, 2
• Hee Haw, 4
• Nashville Now, 4
• Pop Goes the Country, 4
• The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, 4
• The Jimmy Dean Show, 4
• The Johnny Carson Show
• The Johnny Cash Show, 4
• The Porter Wagoner Show, 4
• The Statler Brothers Show, 4
• The Wilburn Brothers Show, 4 

1-Film, 2-Night Club, 3-Radio, 4-TV 

Billboard Chart Data 

• No. 1 Singles: 0
• Top-20 Singles: 12
• Crossover Singles: 2
• Charted Singles: 17
• Chart Years Active: 1944-1989

Awards 

Country Music Association 

• Country Music Hall of Fame 1962 

Academy of Country Music 

• Pioneer Award (1984) 

Music City News

 Living Legend Award (1983)

Career Labels: 

• Okeh Records (1944)
• Columbia Records (1947 ~ 1948)
• Hickory Records (1958 ~1974)

Billboard Top-20 Singles 

1. The Prodigal Son -1944#
2. I'll Forgive You But I Can't Forget*#
3. Write Me Sweetheart
4. (Our Own) Jole Blon -1947
5. Waltz of the Wind -1948
6. Unloved and Unclaimed
7. This World Can't Stand Long
8. Tennessee Waltz
9. A Sinner's Death
10. Once More -1958
11. So Many Times
12. Come and Knock -1959

*-Biggest Chart Single 

#-Crossover Chart Single

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wabash Cannonball: The Roy Acuff Story

Roy Acuff was a country music singer, fiddler and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and hoedown format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.

After his brief career as a baseball player was abruptly ended by severe sunstroke, Roy Acuff became one of the Grand Ole Opry's most popular entertainers. Hailing from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee (TN), where he learned fiddle as a child, Acuff joined a medicine show in 1932 after recovering from the heat-induced illness.

By 1936 Acuff and his Crazy Tennesseans had recorded what would become one of his most famous songs, The Great Speckled Bird.

Mr. Acuff lost no time trying to gain a spot on the Grand Ole Opry, but the Opry’s George D. Hay repeatedly refused his services until promoter Joseph Lee Frank intervened in Acuff’s behalf. A 1937 guest shot produced no results, but another on February 5, 1938, did the trick when Acuff’s performance of the classic The Great Speckled Bird generated sacks of fan mail.

Mr. Frank suggested a new band name, the Smoky Mountain Boys and Grand Ole Opry executives Harry Stone and David Stone immediately put the singer at the center of a budding star system, pushing Acuff’s trademark song Wabash Cannon Ball equally hard. Stylistically, his clear, heartfelt vocals modernized the era’s predominantly stringband sound just enough to seem innovative and traditional at the same time.

Starting in 1939, Acuff hosted the Grand Ole Opry's Prince Albert segment, but left the show in 1946 after a dispute with management.

Throughout the 1940s Acuff and company scored smash after smash. Dubbed the King of Country Music, Acuff also co-founded one of Nashville's biggest music publishers, Acuff-Rose, which signed Hank Williams among many other songwriters.

By the early fifties, Acuff could easily have retired from the recording studio and the road, but he remained active, recording for Capitol Records, Decca Records, MGM Records and after 1957, Hickory Records, a label he formed with Fred and Wesley Rose in 1953.

In 1959 Acuff and Wesley Rose formed the Acuff-Rose Artists Corporation, which proved to be a successful booking agency on the growing Nashville, TN music scene. The singer’s records charted occasionally during the 1950s, but his annual sales generally amounted to a small, if steady, 25,000 copies.

After leaving the Opry, Acuff spent several years touring the Western United States, although demand for his appearances dwindled with the lack of national exposure and the rise of musicians such as Ernest Tubb and Eddy Arnold, who were more popular with younger audiences. He eventually returned to the Opry, although by the 1960s, his record sales had dropped off considerably.

Combined with falling road show receipts during the late fifties and early sixties, his modest sales prompted him to temporarily incorporate a snare drum and electric guitar into his band, but these experiments were ultimately dropped in a return to his standby all-acoustic sound.

After he suffered serious injuries in a July 1965 car wreck that also nearly killed band member Shot Jackson, he began to speak of retiring from the road, though he would continue to make personal appearances for some time to come.

RoyAcuff did it all and Jimmie Rodgers aside, he did it first. But where Rodgers lived fast, died young, and left a handsome, debonair corpse, Acuff lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labor.

In 1962, Acuff was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame (HOF), an honor that had previously gone only to some dead folks he was more than a little familiar with: Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and Fred Rose. Acuff played such a huge role in the development of hillbilly music that he became the first icon who didn’t have to die to gain the HOF induction.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Crazy Tennesseeans

(1936)

• Roy Acuff (vocal, fiddle)
• Clell Summey (string guitar)
• Jess Easterday (guitar)
• Red Jones (string bass)
• Sam "Dynamite" Hatcher (harmonica)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Smoky Mountain Boys

(1936 ~ 1937)

• Roy Acuff (vocal, fiddle)
• Clell Summey (string guitar)
• Jess Easterday (guitar)
• Red Jones (guitar, string bass)
• Sam "Dynamite" Hatcher (harmonica)

(1938)

• Roy Acuff (vocal, fiddle)
• Bob Wright guitar)
• Clell Summey (string guitar)
• Jess Easterday (guitar)
• Red Jones (guitar, string bass)

(1939 ~ 1940)

• Roy Acuff (vocal, fiddle)
• Jess Easterday (string bass)
• Lonnie Wilson (guitar)
• Pete "Oswald" Kirby (string guitar)

(1941)

• Roy Acuff (vocal, fiddle)
• Jess Easterday (mandolin)
• Lonnie Wilson (guitar)
• Oral Rhodes (string bass)
• Pete "Oswald" Kirby (string guitar)

(1942)

• Roy Acuff (vocal, fiddle)
• Lonnie Wilson (guitar)
• Pete "Oswald" Kirby (string guitar)
• Velma Williams (string bass)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Rachel Veach

Rachel Veach (1922-1980) of Peytonsville, Tennessee (TN) played with Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountains Boys on the Grand Ole Opry and made a movie in Hollywood, California.

Veach could play the strings off of a banjo and belt out those lyrics. She was one of the first women to ever tour. Veach was a songwriter, musician and started out in the late 30's with Roy Acuff after being introduced by Sam McGhee.