Roy Acuff

ROY ACUFF
 
 
Roy 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 star 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.”  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 co-founded the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company — Acuff-Rose Music — 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.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

Like rock and roll, country music presented older music in new forms in the early days, though most of the material was new songs – or at least new to their audiences.  Hank Williams and Jimmie Rodgers (“The Singing Brakeman”) among others are legendary songwriters as well as performers.  Another early country-music legend Roy Acuff is also renowned as the founder in 1942, with Fred Rose (a talent scout and major music-industry figure), of Acuff-Rose Music; as described in Wikipedia:  “Acuff-Rose’s honest behavior towards their writers set them apart from other music publishing firms at the time and led them to fame throughout the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.”  

 

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This would be a good time to relate my recent purchase of a one-of-a-kind, three-disc album called Will the Circle be Unbroken (1972).  Unlike nearly all of the other rock and country collaborations that I know about, in this case the rockers hand the keys off to country music legends and let them drive.  Ostensibly (or even technically) a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album, Wikipedia calls the album a “collaboration from many famous bluegrass and country-western players, including Roy Acuff, ‘Mother’ Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, Pete ‘Oswald’ Kirby, Norman Blake, Jimmy Martin, and others.  It also introduced fiddler Vassar Clements to a wider audience.”

 

(February 2015)

 

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