Rachel Veach

Musician
Best known for Banjo

Rachel Veach played banjo and sang with Roy Acuff’s Smoky Mountain Boys in the early 1940s, billed as “Queen of the Hills.” She is on Acuff’s records from April 1940 to June 1942, the sessions that produced “The Precious Jewel,” “Wreck on the Highway” and “Night Train to Memphis.”

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Acuff’s band quit early in 1939, and he rebuilt it with Pete Kirby, known on stage as Brother Oswald, Lonnie Wilson and Jake Tindell; later that year he hired Veach. Kirby was presented as her brother, so that audiences saw an unmarried young woman traveling with the band in the company of a family member.

Her first sessions with the band were in Saginaw, Texas, on 11 and 12 April 1940, with Wilson on guitar, Kirby on Dobro and Jess Easterday on bass. They produced “Come Back Little Pal,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “The Precious Jewel.” She recorded with Acuff again in Chicago on 29 and 30 April 1941, and at radio station KNX in Hollywood between 28 May and 4 June 1942, where the band cut “Wreck on the Highway,” “Fire Ball Mail” and “Night Train to Memphis.” She does not appear on the band’s next session, in Chicago in December 1944.

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