Arthur Q. Smith
Musician · 1909–1963 · Griffin, Georgia
Best known for
Songwriter
Arthur Q. Smith — born James Arthur Pritchett — was a Knoxville, Tennessee staff songwriter whose songs became hits for Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Ernest Tubb, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Don Gibson, and Kitty Wells in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but who sold the rights to nearly every song he wrote for $10 or $25 to settle his bar tab at the Three Feathers Sandwich Shop near WNOX. His name finally appeared on a No. 1 country single twenty years after his death.
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- Born James Arthur Pritchett in 1909 in Griffin, Georgia; raised in Harlan, Kentucky.
- Moved to Knoxville in the 1930s to work in the WNOX music scene.
- Performed on WNOX’s Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s as a guitarist, vocalist, and booking agent.
- Held staff-songwriter posts at King Records and at Acuff-Rose Music in Nashville.
- Wrote “Wedding Bells,” “Rainbow at Midnight,” “Missing in Action,” and “I Wouldn’t Change You (If I Could),” among many others.
- Sold the rights to most of his songs for $10 to $25 to musicians passing through Knoxville or to the owners of the Three Feathers Sandwich Shop on Gay Street, often to clear bar tabs.
- Managed Hank Williams briefly in the late 1940s.
- Alcoholism made him unemployable from the late 1940s onward.
- Diagnosed with cancer in 1962; died in a Knoxville flophouse on March 21, 1963, leaving a wife and six children.
- Ricky Skaggs’s 1983 recording of “I Wouldn’t Change You (If I Could)” reached No. 1 country — the first time Smith’s name appeared on a chart-topping single.
