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- [S142] Newspaper Article, The Atlanta Journal Constitution (GA), 23 Nov 1992.
Grand Ole Opry 'King' Roy Acuff dies
'Wabash Cannonball' was biggest hit record
Nashville - Roy Acuff, the "King of Country Music" who rose to fame with fancy fiddle playing and songs such as "The Wabash Cannonball," died today. He was 89.
Mr. Acuff, who had been hospitalized several times in recent months, most recently Oct. 30, died at 2:35 a.m. of congestive heart failure, Baptist Hospital said in a statement.
Mr. Acuff was the first major singing star to launch his career on the Grand Ole Opry. Until he debuted on the weekly radio program on Nashville's WSM radio in 1937, it was dominated by string bands. More than a half-century later, Mr. Acuff still was performing as the Opry's best-known member.
Some of his songs, such as "The Wabash Cannonball," "The Great Speckled Bird" and "I Saw the Light," are country classics. He became the first living performer to be elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1962.
When the Opry moved its location from Nashville's Ryman Auditorium to Opryland U.S.A. in 1974, a home was built for Mr. Acuff in the 480-acre entertainment park. From there, he held forth as a revered senior citizen of Nashville and its unique music scene.
Mr. Acuff was co-founder, along with Fred Rose, of Acuff-Rose Publishing Co., one of the world's largest publishers of country music. Mr. Acuff signed the late Hank Williams to the latter's first singing contract. Opryland U.S.A. bought Acuff-Rose Publishing for $20 million in 1985.
Mr. Acuff was so popular in his home state that he twice was put forth as a candidate for governor. He halfheartedly sought the Democratic nomination in a losing effort in 1944, but campaigned hard in another losing effort as the Republican nominee in 1948.
Former President Ronald Reagan flew to Nashville for Mr. Acuff's 80th birthday in 1983. Mr. Acuff clowned with former President Richard M. Nixon on the Opry stage in 1974, trying to teach Mr. Nixon the fine points of playing with a yo-yo.
Mr. Acuff was a fun-loving east Tennessee native who sometimes balanced his fiddle bow on his nose. He was serious about his music, however. In a wailing tenor voice, he belted out tunes that are familiar to every country music fan: "The Precious Jewel," "Wreck on the Highway," "All the World Is Lonely Now" and "The Great Judgment Day," among others.
"People used to call it hillbilly music," Mr. Acuff said. "I never took offense at that. I'm from the mountains, so I guess I am a hillbilly."
Roy Claxton Acuff was born Sept. 15, 1903, near Maynardsville in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains. His father was a missionary Baptist preacher, rural judge, tenant farmer and amateur fiddler. The young Mr. Acuff sang at his father's church services and learned to play the fiddle.
When he was 16, Mr. Acuff and his family moved to Knoxville , where he became a three-sport star at Central High School. Country music legend has it that the New York Yankees offered Mr. Acuff a professional baseball contract, but his career was ended by a severe case of sunstroke. He decided to pursue a career as a musician instead.
He met Mildred Douglass, a Knoxville schoolgirl, and they were married on Christmas Day 1936.
Mr. Acuff later recalled that he "never saw a show until I put one on." His first job was singing and playing fiddle for Doc Hauer's Medicine Show.
He later described how the traveling troupe's lead performer, Doc Hauer, worked. "He'd get some man wearing old brogan shoes to come up on the stage, and he'd ask him if he was bothered with corns," Mr. Acuff said.
"Wearing those shoes, why, of course, the man would say yes, that he could hardly walk because of corns. Then Dr. Hauer would pour some of the corn remover on top of the shoes, and it would seep right through. After a moment, Dr. Hauer would put one of his feet on top of the man's feet and bear down with all his weight.
" 'Does that hurt?' he'd ask the man.
" 'No, it don't hurt at all,' the man would say, wiggling his foot around. Of course, the reason it didn't hurt at all was because he couldn't feel anything at all. The corn remover would take the corns off, all right, but it might take the foot with it."
The next step in Mr. Acuff's career came when he performed on Knoxville 's WNOX radio with a group he organized and named the Crazy Tennesseans. Archie Campbell, a future comedic Opry performer and later on TV's "Hee Haw," was one of the first members of the group.
His big break came when Art Satherly, a well-known talent scout who earlier had discovered Gene Autry, signed Mr. Acuff to a contract with Columbia Records.
In February 1938, Mr. Acuff made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry. The radio program had been founded by George D. Hay in the studios of Nashville's WSM Radio in 1925. It had moved to various studios, a theater, a tabernacle and the War Memorial Auditorium before settling in the rambling Ryman Auditorium, where Mr. Acuff made country music history.
"I like to think that I was the first person to bring voice to the Opry," Mr. Acuff said later. "Until then, there were more string bands than singing."
Mr. Acuff actually was the program's second singing star; the first was the late "Uncle" Dave Macon.
Mr. Acuff brought along his band. However, Mr. Hay thought the name Crazy Tennesseans demeaned the state, and Mr. Acuff agreed, changing the name to Smoky Mountain Boys.
Times were hard, and for their first four years in Nashville, Mr. Acuff and his wife lived in a trailer. He was away much of the time, though.
In the introduction to Jack Hurst's definitive 1975 volume, "Grand Ole Opry," Mr. Acuff recalled his hectic touring schedule.
"In those days, only sickness or death allowed us to be off the Opry, no matter where we were during the week," Mr. Acuff wrote. "We were traveling in Fords on two-lane highways, so we couldn't get too far away, but I'd go over to the Carolinas or down in Georgia somewhere, and I'd play my Friday night show and then come back in here for the Opry [Saturday night].
"My wife would meet me with my clean clothes, and I'd change at the Opry and perform and kiss her goodbye and head back to Asheville or Atlanta or somewhere for a matinee on Sunday."
Mr. Acuff's first big hits were "The Wabash Cannonball" and "The Great Speckled Bird."
"Cannonball" is a staple of American music, a song whose lyrics apparently are rooted in hobo legend about a train barreling through the countryside. Mr. Acuff's rendition was punctuated by an imitation of a locomotive whistle.
The title of "The Great Speckled Bird" refers to a passage in the 12th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, in which God laments, "Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird."
The Bible contributed to another early Acuff hit, "Radio Station S-A-V-E-D," in which Jesus Christ was depicted as a station owner.
Country music began evolving, but Mr. Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys remained true to the old-fashioned hillbilly tradition. They stayed with their medium's essential instruments: the fiddle, string bass, rhythm guitar, five-string banjo and dobro.
Mr. Acuff was a "tear-jerker," who unashamedly performed such doleful tunes as "Don't Make Me Go to Bed" and "Sweeter than the Flowers," while tears welled in his eyes.
"You needn't be ashamed of it," he said. "Whoever wrote the song would love the way you're performing it, because you're sharing his sorrows."
In 1940, Mr. Acuff and other members of the cast starred in the Republic movie, "The Grand Ole Opry."
Three years later, politics beckoned. Tennessee Gov. Prentice Cooper turned down an invitation to appear as a guest of honor on the radio program because, he said, country music was "disgracing the state."
A reporter for the Nashville Tennessean started a petition drive to place Mr. Acuff's name on the 1944 ballot as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor. The petition drive was successful, but Mr. Acuff campaigned little and later bowed out of the race.
However, he ran hard four years later, switching to the Republican Party, which dominated the politics of his native east Tennessee. Mr. Acuff won the party's nomination without making a single speech and went on to receive the most votes any Republican had received in the traditionally Democratic state. Mr. Acuff lost to the Democratic nominee, his close friend Gordon Browning.
"As governor, I would have been just another politician," Mr. Acuff said. "As a singer, I can be Roy Acuff."
During World War II, Mr. Acuff began making annual tours in which he performed for servicemen around the world, helping to take country into the mainstream of American music.
He gained a singular honor with his 1962 election as the only living person in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. The citation stated: "The 'Smoky Mountain Boy' fiddled and sang his way into the hearts of millions the world over, oftentimes bringing country music to areas where it had never been before. The 'King of Country Music' has carried his troupe of performers overseas to entertain his country's armed forces at Christmastime for more than 20 years. Many successful artists credit their success to a helping hand and encouraging word from Roy Acuff."
Mr. Acuff was injured badly in a July 1965 automobile wreck on a rain-slickened highway in Sparta, Tenn. The singer suffered broken ribs, collarbone and pelvis. After that, he began to curtail his traveling schedule and spend more of his time in Nashville.
By the early 1970s, however, Mr. Acuff had resumed touring country music festivals, state fairs, college campuses and overseas military bases.
He was one of three country music giants from the industry's past still appearing regularly on the Opry radio show. The others were Bill Monroe and Minnie Pearl.
At the March 1974 festivities opening Opryland U.S.A., he introduced the guest of honor, Mr. Nixon. Mr. Acuff presented the president with a yellow yo-yo similar to the one Mr. Acuff used in his performances.
Mr. Acuff's wife, Mildred, who helped run the Acuff-Rose Publishing Co., died in her sleep at the age of 67 in 1981.
Declaring, "I'm leading a very lonely life right now," Mr. Acuff sold his two-story colonial mansion overlooking the Cumberland River and moved to the house built for him at Opryland U.S.A. He enjoyed reminiscing about his souvenirs and antiques, washing his own dishes, and, after entertaining a visitor, going to dinner at a Shoney's restaurant.
Mr. Acuff was reluctant to accept the title given him by others, and which also has been accorded an equally reticent Willie Nelson.
"I ain't no 'King of Country Music,' " Mr. Acuff said. "I'm just Roy Acuff."
Surviving is his son, Roy Neill Acuff of Nashville.
- [S87] Death Certificate.
Name Date of Death / Age County of Death County / State of Residence Marital Status Gender Race File #
ACUFF ROY C 11-23-1992 / 89 DAVIDSON DAVIDSON / TN WIDOWER M WHITE 42741
- [S147] Find a Grave, (Memorial: 1435).
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