Jerry Acuff Popular Books

Jerry Acuff Biography & Facts

Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American 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 singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful. In 1952, Hank Williams told Ralph Gleason, "He's the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn't worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God." Acuff began his music career in the 1930s and gained regional fame as the singer and fiddler for his group, the Smoky Mountain Boys. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1938, and although his popularity as a musician waned in the late 1940s, he remained one of the Opry's key figures and promoters for nearly four decades. In 1942, Acuff and Fred Rose founded Acuff-Rose Music, the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company, which signed such artists as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and the Everly Brothers. In 1962, Acuff became the first living inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Early life Acuff was born on September 15, 1903 in Maynardville, Tennessee, to Ida Florence (née Carr) and Simon E. Neill Acuff, the third of their five children. Acuff was of English ancestry, and his ancestors came to North America during the colonial era, settling in the mountains of Virginia and the Carolinas. The Acuffs were a fairly prominent family in Union County. Roy's paternal grandfather, Coram Acuff, had been a Tennessee state senator, and his maternal grandfather was a local physician. Roy's father was an accomplished fiddler and a Baptist preacher, his mother was proficient on the piano, and during Roy's early years the Acuff house was a popular place for local gatherings. At such gatherings, Roy would often amuse people by balancing farm tools on his chin. He also learned to play the harmonica and jaw harp at an early age. In 1919, the Acuff family relocated to Fountain City (now a suburb of Knoxville), a few miles south of Maynardville. Roy attended Central High School, where he sang in the school chapel's choir and performed in "every play they had." His primary passion, however, was athletics. He was a three-sport standout at Central, and after graduating in 1925, was offered a scholarship to Carson-Newman University, but turned it down. He played with several small baseball clubs around Knoxville, worked at odd jobs, and occasionally boxed. In 1929, Acuff tried out for the Knoxville Smokies, a minor-league baseball team then affiliated with the New York Giants. A series of collapses in spring training following a sunstroke, however, ended his baseball career. The effects left him ill for several years, and he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1930. "I couldn't stand any sunshine at all," he later recalled. While recovering, Acuff began to hone his fiddle skills, often playing on the family's front porch after the sun went down. His father gave him several records of regionally renowned fiddlers, such as Fiddlin' John Carson and Gid Tanner, which were important influences on his early style. Career Early music career In 1932, Dr. Hauer's medicine show, which toured the southern Appalachian region, hired Acuff as one of its entertainers. Acuff began his career as a blackface performer. The purpose of the entertainers was to draw a large crowd to whom Hauer could sell patent medicines (of suspect quality) for various ailments. While on the medicine show circuit, Acuff met the legendary Appalachian banjoist Clarence Ashley, from whom he learned "The House of the Rising Sun" and "Greenback Dollar", both of which Acuff later recorded. As the medicine show lacked microphones, Acuff learned to sing loud enough to be heard above the din, a skill that later helped him stand out on early radio broadcasts. In 1934, Acuff left the medicine show circuit and began playing at local shows with various musicians in the Knoxville area, where he had become a celebrity and fixture in local newspaper columns. That year, guitarist Jess Easterday and Hawaiian guitarist Clell Summey joined Acuff to form the Tennessee Crackerjacks, who performed regularly on the Knoxville radio stations WROL and WNOX (the band moved back and forth between stations as Acuff bickered with their managers about compensation). Within a year, the group had added bassist Red Jones and changed its name to the Crazy Tennesseans after being introduced as such by a WROL announcer named Alan Stout. Fans often remarked to Acuff how "clear" his voice was coming through over the radio, important in an era when singers were often drowned out by string-band cacophony. The popularity of Acuff's rendering of the song "The Great Speckled Bird" helped the group land a contract with American Record Corporation, (ARC) for which they recorded several dozen tracks (including the band's best-known track, "Wabash Cannonball") in 1936. Needing to complete a 20-song commitment, the band recorded two ribald tunes—including "When Lulu's Gone"—but released them under a pseudonym, the Bang Boys. The group split from ARC in 1937 over a separate contract dispute. Grand Ole Opry In 1938, the Crazy Tennesseans moved to Nashville to audition for the Grand Ole Opry. Although their first audition went poorly, the band's second audition impressed Opry founder George D. Hay and producer Harry Stone, and they offered the group a contract later that year. On Hay and Stone's suggestion, Acuff changed the group's name to the Smoky Mountain Boys, referring to the mountains near where his bandmates and he grew up. Shortly after the band joined the Opry, Clell Summey left the group and was replaced by Fiddle player Beecher (Pete) Kirby—best known by his stage name Bashful Brother Oswald—whom Acuff had met in a Knoxville bakery earlier that year. Acuff's powerful lead vocals and Kirby's dobro playing and high-pitched backing vocals gave the band its distinctive sound. By 1939, Jess Easterday had switched to bass to replace Red Jones, and Acuff had added guitarist Lonnie "Pap" Wilson and banjoist Rachel Veach to fill out the band's lineup. Within a year, Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys rivaled long-time Opry banjoist Uncle Dave Macon as the troupe's most popular act. In the same period, he was initiated to the Masonic Lodge of East Nashville No. 560. In spring 1940, Acuff and his band traveled to Hollywood, where they appeared with Hay and Macon in the motion picture Grand Ole Opry. Acuff appeared in several subsequent B movies, including O, My Darling Clementine (1943), in which he played a singing sheriff; Night Train to Memphis (1946), the title of which comes from a song Acuff recorded in 1940; and Home in San Antone (1949), in which he starred with Lloyd Corrigan and William Frawley. Acuff and his band also joined Macon and other Opry acts at various tent shows held throughout the Southeast in the early 1940s. .... Discover the Jerry Acuff popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jerry Acuff books.