Arthur Smith
Musician · 1921–2014 · Clinton, South Carolina
Best known for
Guitar
Composer
Banjo
Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith was a guitarist, composer, bandleader, and pioneering broadcaster whose instrumental “Guitar Boogie” helped bridge country picking and the electric boogie that fed early rock ‘n’ roll. He is equally remembered as the composer of “Feudin’ Banjos” — the tune the world came to know as “Dueling Banjos” after Deliverance — and as one of the most enterprising figures in the postwar Carolina music scene.
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- Born April 1, 1921, in the textile-mill town of Clinton, South Carolina, Smith grew up in a musical household; his father led a brass band. With his brothers Ralph and Sonny he formed a Dixieland combo, the Carolina Crackerjacks, which found far greater success after shifting from jazz toward country.
- He began hosting live radio shows in 1941 at WSPA in Spartanburg, then moved in 1943 to the powerful WBT in Charlotte, North Carolina, which became his lifelong base for broadcasting and recording.
- His signature instrumental “Guitar Boogie” — written during his U.S. Navy service in World War II and first recorded around 1945, then re-cut for MGM in 1948 — became a runaway hit, selling more than three million copies and earning an RIAA gold disc. It is often cited as the first guitar instrumental to reach the country charts, and it gave Smith the nickname that distinguished him from the fiddler Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith.
- The tune’s reach carried into the rock era, most famously through The Virtues’ hit adaptation “Guitar Boogie Shuffle.”
- Smith composed “Feudin’ Banjos” in 1954 and recorded it in 1955 with five-string banjo master Don Reno, playing the four-string plectrum banjo himself — a call-and-response duet between the two instruments.
- The piece resurfaced, rearranged and initially uncredited, as “Dueling Banjos” in the 1972 film Deliverance, and the single reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1973 (topping the Cashbox chart). Smith sued Warner Bros. for the missing credit and prevailed, securing both composer credit and royalties.
- The Arthur Smith Show, launched in the early 1950s, is widely regarded as the first nationally syndicated country-music program on television; it ran for some three decades across roughly 90 markets.
- In 1957 Smith opened what is often called the first commercial recording studio in the Southeast, in Charlotte; James Brown recorded “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” there in 1965, and the studio served musicians across country, gospel, and R&B.
- A devout man, Smith also worked extensively in gospel, performing sacred material with the Crossroads Quartet and writing and recording gospel songs throughout his career.
- His honors included induction into the South Carolina Hall of Fame (1998), the Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame (2009), and the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame (2010).
- Smith died at his Charlotte home on April 3, 2014, two days after his 93rd birthday, remembered as a musician, businessman, and broadcaster who helped shape the sound and infrastructure of Carolina country music.
