Down Life's Highway

* Remembering Roy Acuff and Hank Williams

A two part series

"I wondered home

one day, where I

used to run and

play, only to find I

was too late. Old

Rover was gone from

his pallet on the

lawn, the old folks

had died and gone

away."

Read Part 2 on Hank Williams next week in The Record

Jimmy Rogers, the singing brakeman, blues and yodel man died about the time I was born but his songs lived on for years. They still bounce around in my head today. As a child, I met a young hobo who played guitar and sang Jimmie's songs. There is one song he sang that I've spent a lifetime looking for its origin. The few words I recall are, "I wondered home one day, where I used to run and play, only to find I was too late. Old Rover was gone from his pallet on the lawn, the old folks had died and gone away."

My Uncle Dan had bought us an old radio.

We didn't have electricity so it was a radio with fuses, tubes and I suppose a battery. When we held the ground-wire, the volume went up. The old radio became our entertainment and connection to the outside world. We sat on Grandma's porch at night and listened to the music from the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride.

Roy Acuff

Ray Acuff was named the King of Country Music by baseball great Dizzy Dean. Roy Claxton Acuff emerged as a star during the early 1940's. He was born in Maynardville, Tennessee

on Sept. 15, 1903. Acuff helped intensify the star system at the Grand Ole Opry and remained its leading personality until his death. He co-founded Acuff-Rose Publications with song writer Fred Rose thus laying an important cornerstone of the Nashville music industry.

Acuff came from a rural folkbased background. His father farmed while also serving as Maynardville's post master and as pastor of the town's Baptist church. As a youth Acuff soaked in music of all sorts but his real love at the time was sports; in high school, he lettered in football, basketball and baseball. Acuff gained 13 varsity letters in high school.

After graduation, Acuff turned down a scholarship to nearby Carson-Newman College.

He played semi-professional baseball and boxed informally. Early in 1929, major league baseball scouts recruited Acuff for training camp.

The King of Country Music could well have become another Lou Gehrig or Babe Ruth.

Eventually, while playing minor league ball and being considered for the New York Yankees, a sever sunstroke put an end to his career.

In the early 1940's, Acuff zoomed to the top of his field in music, with the help from the WSM 50,000-watt transmitter. Fast selling songbooks, hit records such as "Wabash Cannon

Ball," "The Great Speckled Bird," "Wreck on the Highway," and "Fireball Mail" and  mushrooming gate receipts on the road all boosted his income.

During the '40's Acuff's recordings became so popular that he headed Frank Sinatra in some major music polls and reportedly caused Japanese troops to yell. "To hell with Roosevelt to hell with Babe Ruth, to hell with Roy Acuff," as they banzai charged at Okinawa.

He unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of Tennessee on the Republican ticket in 1948.

Acuff made his first international tour with an Opry troupe that performed at U.S. military bases in Europe in 1949.

In 1971, Acuff received a substantial boost by participating in the famous "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" album project which featured the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a number of country artists.

Other testaments to his continuing popularity were the 1974 chart making records, "Back in the Country" and "Old Time Sunshine Song, " written by than Acuff-Rose singer-songwriter Eddy Raven, a native of Lafayette, LA and cousin of Doug Kershaw.

Acuff's tremendous contribution to country music was recognized in November 1962 when he became the first living musician to be honored as a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He continued to appear regularly on the Grand Ole Opry throughout the '70's and '80's. He died on November 23, 1992, following a short illness.

He brought sunshine to this kid over that old radio.