Hall of Famer: Roy Acuff

Name: Roy Claxton Acuff

Born: September 15, 1903, Maynardville, Tennessee

Died: November 23, 1992, at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, of congestive heart failure

Inducted: 1962

Also Known As: The Smoky Mountain Boy; The King of Country Music

"The King of Country Music." Those words have been identified with Roy Acuff since World War II, when famous pitcher Dizzy Dean appeared onstage with Acuff and proclaimed him "the king of the hillbillies." His career spanned seven decades, and his popularity was so far-reaching that Japanese kamikaze pilots invoked his name when attacking American troops.

Roy Claxton Acuff was born in 1903 in Maynardville, Tennessee. He grew up with a love of baseball, and music was always a central part of the family home.

By Acuff's own admission his youth was wild. At one point he said his father, a Baptist preacher, chastised Acuff by warning him that his drinking and carousing would get him put in jail, to which Acuff claims he replied, "I can't think of any better reason to go to jail than drinking and carousing!"

Acuff changed his ways in adulthood and concentrated on playing baseball. In 1929 he was offered an opportunity to try out for the minor league team of the New York Giants. His skills could have earned him a career; however, he repeatedly collapsed during workouts. He was diagnosed with sunstroke and ordered to remain inside with no exposure to sunlight for at least one year.

The confinement to a different sort of jail than his father had warned about had a profound impact on Acuff. Initially he was so depressed about being forced to stay indoors and the hopes of his dream of playing professional sports destroyed by his illness that he suffered a nervous breakdown. He recovered, however, by turning to his father's fiddle.

Since childhood Acuff had been a performer. He was popular in family gatherings for his talent of balancing objects on his chin. Now armed with the additional skill of music Acuff set his sights on a new career.

In 1932 Acuff joined a traveling minstrel/medicine show. He remained on the circuit for two years and learned valuable skills as a performer. In 1934 Acuff formed a band, which he called the Tennessee Crackerjacks, with Hawaiian guitarist Clell Summey, who would later be known as "Cousin Jody." The band found a spot on Knoxville radio station WROL and became widely popular.

By 1936 Acuff and his band, now called the Crazy Tennesseans after a WROL announcer had mis-identified them as such, were the top draw on rival Knoxville station WNOX. The station's studios were located on the top floor of the Andrew Johnson Hotel, and hotel guests complained that they couldn't get an elevator because so many people were coming in from off the streets to go to the studio to hear Acuff perform. The radio station moved down the street to a large theater, which Acuff packed daily at noon.

Thanks to his radio popularity and a song he frequently performed, a gospel number titled "The Great Speckle Bird," Acuff obtained a recording deal. His earliest recordings included the song that landed him the recording contract, the first version of "House of the Rising Sun" recorded under that name (the song had previously been recorded in a different form under the title "Rounder's Luck"), and the song that would become Acuff's trademark: "Wabash Cannonball." Although no precise calculations were available in the 1930s, it is estimated that "Wabash Cannonball" sold over ten million copies.

With his success, Acuff was offered a spot on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Acuff and his band, renamed the "Smoky Mountain Boys" because Acuff believed "Crazy Tennesseans" may be construed as an insult to his home state, moved to Nashville and quickly became the top act in "hillbilly" music thanks to the strong, clear signal of station WSM, which hosted the Grand Ole Opry.

Acuff, ineligible to serve in World War II because of his age (40) and his history of sunstroke, stayed behind and provided music to the country. Due to the fact that he was one of the few country artists making music (since many had gone into the military at the start of World War II) Acuff's popularity was solidified.

It may be difficult for many in modern society, with instant reporting and stories going "viral" on the Internet, to understand the scope of Roy Acuff's success. During the time Acuff was becoming a superstar the only source of information and entertainment was the radio. There were no country music TV channels (since television was more in the experimental and development stages in the late 1930s), no magazines, and a widespread prejudice against what was known as "hillbilly music." Acuff's popularity was nationwide, even world-wide, as Japanese kamikaze pilots proved during World War II. The attacking pilots were heard to shout, "To hell with Roosevelt! To hell with Babe Ruth! And to hell with Roy Acuff!" as they bombarded American troops.

The prejudice against country music was only obvious to people inside the industry at the time. The one music licensing agency, ASCAP, refused to accept "hillbilly" music, which led to the formation of a rival company, BMI. Even though there was now a licensing company there still were no publishing companies who would accept things deemed "folk or hillbilly," choosing to concentrate instead on show tunes, big band numbers and popular songs.

Acuff, who wrote a number of songs himself, tired of establishing his copyright on the song by mailing the songs to himself (which proved their ownership by the postmark on the envelope). In 1943 he teamed up with songwriter and businessman Fred Rose to form Acuff-Rose Publishing, which welcomed and actively sought songs by country songwriters. Acuff-Rose was the first publishing company devoted strictly to country music, although it would later branch out, and it was for many years the largest publisher of country songs in the world.

During a tour stop in Dallas fans were upset that a Roy Acuff show was sold out and tried to break in to the theater to see the show. Pitcher Dizzy Dean, a friend of Acuff's, was at the show. When Acuff introduced Dean to the audience, Dean proclaimed, "It's always a pleasure to appear on the stage with the king of the hillbillies."

The name stuck. Acuff's music was unashamedly hillbilly and, unlike others, he had no problem with the term. In fact, he ended up running for governor of Tennessee in 1948 due to the fact that a previous governor chastised Acuff for proclaiming Tennessee was "the hillbilly capital of the United States" and suggested that, if Acuff thought the place was so "hillbilly" he (Acuff) should run for governor.

Other performers, most notably Ernest Tubb, were not so comfortable with the term "hillbilly," thinking it was demeaning to the music, the people who performed it, and the fans. Tubb fought hard to get the term "hillbilly music" changed to "country music," and by 1948 trade papers dropped the phrase "hillbilly and Western music" and replaced it with "country and western music."

Acuff, however, had no problems with the term "King of the hillbillies." In 1990 he told a Grand Ole Opry crowd how the term came to be and admitted, "I like 'king of the hillbillies' better than 'king of country music.'"

The only thing Acuff ever had a problem with was the word king. "I'm no different than anybody else," he stated. "I'm not a king, and I'm not on no throne."

By the 1960s country music was changing, thanks to the advent of rock and roll. The "Nashville sound" with its smooth, orchestrated production was popular. More and more country acts were starting to use drums, even though drums were not allowed on the Grand Ole Opry until the mid-1960s. Through all the changes Roy Acuff remained a constant. He became an elder statesman for country music.

In the late 1960s he opened a record store not too far from the Ryman Auditorium, where the Opry was held. A museum housing artifacts from his career was in the back of the store, and Acuff was frequently on hand to greet visitors.

When the Opry was canceled on Saturday, April 6 1968 because of rioting following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King in Memphis two days earlier Acuff decided to have an informal show in a nearby dance hall for the fans who had come to Nashville from out of town and were unaware of the fact that Nashville, as with so many other cities in the immediate aftermath of Dr. King's murder, was under a curfew.

When the Opryland theme park opened in the early 1970s one of the rides was named after Acuff's famous song "Wabash Cannonball." In later years a statue of Acuff and his longtime friend Minnie Pearl, who frequently used Acuff as a "straight man" for her jokes on the Opry, was featured at the Grand Ole Opry Museum on the Opryland grounds.

All the while Acuff was still recording. He was featured with young country, bluegrass and rock performers on the 1971 landmark album Will the Circle Be Unbroken, and his final charted record was in 1989, over 50 years after his first success.

In 1962 Roy Acuff became the fourth person, and the first living performer, to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Roy Acuff was assigned dressing room #1 at the Grand Ole Opry House. To this day it has his name on the door, the only dressing room door with a name. As his eyesight and health grew more frail Acuff did nothing but the Friday and Saturday night Opry shows. He was escorted to and from the Opry House from his home, which was built on the Opryland grounds at his request following the murder of his friend Dave "Stringbean" Akeman in 1973.

For much of the early autumn of 1992 Acuff was in and out of Baptist Hospital due to congestive heart failure. Most of the time he would be checked out on Friday afternoon, do the Opry shows on the weekend, then go back into the hospital after the Saturday night show.

Acuff's final performance at the Opry was on Saturday, October 25, 1992. Less than one month later, the 89-year-old "King of Country Music" died at Baptist Hospital.

Although Acuff's name may have been forgotten by many of today's fans, it is important that they realize that the road Roy Acuff traveled, unlike today's superstars with their private planes and customized tour buses, was unpaved. All country music owes him a debt of gratitude, because it was Roy Acuff who paved that road.

Roy Acuff wrote an autobiography, Roy Acuff's Nashville: The Life and Good Times of Country Music, in 1983. Another biography of Acuff, Roy Acuff: The Smoky Mountain Boy was also published. The fourth printing of the biography was released in 1997.

Acuff starred in a number of movies, starting with Grand Ole Opry in 1940. Other films in which he appeared included Night Train to Memphis and Sing, Neighbor, Sing.