Roy Acuff born 15 September 1903

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.

Roy Claxton Acuff was born September 15, 1903, in a three-room shack in Maynardville, Tennessee, the son of a Baptist minister. As a child he learnt jew’s harp and harmonica. Following a move to Fountain City, near Knoxville he started playing minor league baseball and was considered for the New York Yankees. However, severe sunstroke put an end to his career, confining him to bed for much of 1929 and 1930. Following his illness, he hung around the house learning fiddle and listening to old-time players. In early 1932 he joined a travelling medicine show, playing small towns in Virginia and Tennessee.

A year later he formed a group, The Tennessee Crackerjacks, in which Clell Sumney played Dobro, providing the distinctive sound that came to be associated with Roy Acuff. He soon gained a regular programme on Knoxville’s WROL. Adopting the name of The Crazy Tennesseans, they moved to the rival Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round show on KNOX. He married Mildred Douglas in 1936, the same year he made his recording debut for ARC (later to become Columbia). Among the first songs he recorded were The Great Speckled Bird and Wabash Cannonball, which would always be associated with him.

He made his first appearance on The Grand Ole Opry in 1938 and soon became a regular. He changed the name of his band to the Smoky Mountain Boys, a name that was to stick, and recruited long time band members Bashful Brother Oswald, Howdy Forrester and Jimmie Riddle. With his Smoky Mountain Boys he did not just perform hillbilly songs, they gave a complete stage show, including vaudeville/minstrel-style skits and slapstick. Over the years he refashioned the band as an old-time string band and added more traditional sounding and religious songs to their repertoire.

                            

He started having unprecedented recording success, his biggest sellers during the early 1940s included Night Train To Memphis, Pins And Needles, Beneath That Lonely Mound of Clay, and The Precious Jewel. He also appeared in several movies including Hi Neighbour, My Darling Clementine, Cowboy Canteen and Sing 

Neighbour, Sing. It was at this time that he printed and published his own songbooks.

Out on the road he soon sold several hundred thousand copies and realised that there was an untapped goldmine in music publishing. He set up Acuff-Rose with Fred Rose, a professional songwriter and pianist working in Chicago, who had enjoyed notable country success with songs like Be Honest With Me and Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain. The publishing company went on to become one of the most famous in the world, publishing songs penned by Hank Williams, Don Gibson, Roy Orbison, The Everly Brothers, 
Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, John D. Loudermilk and many more Nashville-based writers.

In the early 1950s country music was beginning to undergo changes. Electric guitars, drums and smoother vocalists were creeping into the music, and the older traditional styling of Roy Acuff was not selling. Columbia requested that he change his sound. He was having none of that, and instead changed labels, recording for MGM, Decca and Capitol without any chart success. Through Acuff-Rose he set up Hickory Records and made a modest return to the charts in 1958 with Once More.

Though he continued to record prolifically, his record sales were no longer at the peak of the 1940s, though he did score low chart entries with So Many Times, Come and Knock (1959), and Freight Train Blues (1965), and his publishing empire seemed ever-expanding. However, his tremendous contribution to country music was recognised in November 1962 when he became the first living musician to be honoured as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

By the beginning of the 1970s, he decided to cut back on touring,

though he did visit the UK for the Wembley Festivals. He guested on The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s triple album set, “Will the circle be unbroken” in 1972, lending credence to contemporary and country-rock music. He continued to appear on The Grand Ole Opry throughout the 1970s and 1980s, though by the early 1990s his only appearances were infrequent guest spots at Opryland. Roy Acuff died on November 23, 1992, following a short illness, and was buried just four hours later. He had requested a swift service and burial because he did not want his funeral turned into a circus. 

(Compiled and edited mainly from an article by Alan Cackett)