Roy Acuff and His Smoky Mountain Boys

Acuff, born in Maynardville, Tennessee, in 1903, began playing square dances and other gatherings in East Tennessee in the early 1930s with local musicians including Wilson and Kirby, both later long-serving members of his band. A WROL announcer named the group the Crazy Tennesseans, and its broadcasts on WROL and WNOX brought it to the American Record Corporation, which recorded it in Chicago from 20 to 23 October 1936. That first session, with Jess Easterday on guitar, Red Jones on bass and Sam Hatcher on harmonica alongside a Dobro, produced “The Great Speckled Bird” and “Wabash Cannonball.” More sides followed in Birmingham, Alabama, in March 1937.

After a guest spot in 1937 that led nowhere, Acuff sang “The Great Speckled Bird” on the Opry on 5 February 1938 and drew sacks of fan mail. The promoter J. L. Frank suggested a new name for the band, the Smoky Mountain Boys, and the Opry made Acuff one of its central stars, pushing “Wabash Cannonball” as his trademark song. The band recorded under its new name in Columbia, South Carolina, in November 1938, and by the Memphis sessions of July 1939 Wilson and Brother Oswald were in the lineup, with Easterday on bass.

From October 1939 Acuff headlined the Prince Albert Show, the Opry’s NBC network segment, and in the early 1940s the band’s songbooks, road shows and films and its records for Columbia’s Vocalion and OKeh labels made Acuff one of the Opry’s most popular performers. The banjo player and singer Rachel Veach joined Wilson, Oswald and Easterday on the April 1940 sessions, which produced “The Precious Jewel,” “Come Back Little Pal” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” At a session in Hollywood on 28 May 1942, with Easterday on mandolin and Velma Williams on bass, the band cut “Wreck on the Highway,” “Fireball Mail” and “Night Train to Memphis.” The same year Acuff and the songwriter Fred Rose founded Acuff-Rose Publications in Nashville.

Through the 1940s the band kept recording for Columbia in Chicago, Hollywood and, from 1949, Castle Studio in Nashville, with Jimmie Riddle on accordion and harmonica and Tommy Magness on fiddle among the newer members; a January 1949 session produced “Tennessee Waltz.” Honky-tonk and smoother country styles took some of the spotlight in the late 1940s, and Acuff left the Opry in 1946–47 over salary before returning to host its Royal Crown Cola segment. In 1949 he took an Opry troupe to U.S. military bases in Europe, the first of many tours abroad.

In the 1950s Acuff recorded for Capitol, Decca and MGM, and from 1957 for Hickory, the label he had started with Fred and Wesley Rose in 1953. Wilson, Easterday, Oswald, Riddle and the bassist Joe Zinkan were still with him in the mid-1950s, and Howdy Forrester played fiddle on a 1956 session. When sales fell, Acuff briefly added a snare drum and electric guitar, then went back to an all-acoustic band. In 1963 Hickory issued Roy Acuff Sings American Folk Songs, with “Shut Up in the Mines at Coal Creek,” and Hand Clapping Gospel Songs. After a car crash in 1965 that also involved the band’s Shot Jackson, Acuff began to speak of retiring from the road, though he went on making personal appearances.

Acuff took part in the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken sessions in 1971, and the three-record album, released in 1972, added to the following he had gained on the college circuit during the folk revival of the 1960s. “Back in the Country” and “Old Time Sunshine Song” reached the charts in 1974. He stayed the Opry’s senior figure until his death on 23 November 1992. He had been elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1962, the first living member to be chosen.