"Charlie Acuff is our
strongest living link to the folk music history of the Knoxville area. Even as a left-handed youngster, Charlie
absorbed his Union
County
family’s fiddling
legacy, which also gave rise to the career of his famous second cousin
Roy,” says
Dr. Robert Cogswell, director of the Folklife Program at the Tennessee
Arts
Commission.
According to Cogswell, Acuff was playing music for a living
by the 1930s, performing on Knoxville
radio with Esco Hankins’ band and as a duet with his brother Gale. He
played
widely for schoolhouse and movie theater shows, dances, and social
events. Acuff has remained a fixture of
the area music
scene since then, playing with countless other musicians and gaining
friends
and fans of all ages throughout East Tennessee.
Near home Acuff has
been a mainstay of music programming at the Museum of Appalachia
and at Jubilee Community Arts events. Farther away, he’s a regular at
the
annual Breakin’ Up Winter old-time gathering, and has traveled to Washington State where he was featured at
the
Festival of American Fiddle Tunes.
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Fletcher Bright
is an
accomplished teacher, arranger, and musician. He
has achieved international fame as a fiddle player,
making bluegrass
music approachable, lively, and entertaining while keeping a close
grasp of its
tradition and style.
Bright first took up the fiddle as a Chattanooga
teenager in the 1940s, when he and classmates at McCallie School
formed a bluegrass band flippantly named “The Dismembered Tennesseans.” Over time, they claimed to have “made their
mark singing country music for people who don’t particularly like
country
music,” and almost 60 years later, the band is still active.
“As a
devotee of
traditional Southern fiddle music, Fletcher Bright has never lost his
teenage
zeal, carefully studying the music and techniques of old-time,
bluegrass, and
contest fiddle masters, and relentlessly pursuing opportunities to
learn from
and perform with other musicians. In
recent decades, he’s gained recognition as a master in his own right,”
says Dr.
Robert Cogswell, director of the Folklife Program for the Tennessee
Arts
Commission.
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A retired brakeman from Manchester, Tennessee,
Roy Harper has been performing old-time country music for more than
fifty
years. Roy has devoted his life to
continuing the
traditions of the style of country music he grew up listening to. Much of the inspiration for his songs comes
from the many years he spent working on the railroad.
Compared by his fans to Jimmy Rogers, Roy has developed quite a
following among people who find this style of music preferable to
modern
“country” music. “County music gradually
got citified, and I stayed the same.”
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 For his distinctive
two-finger banjo style, East Tennessee
native Will Keys has been honored with the
National Heritage Fellowship, the country’s most prestigious award in
traditional arts. Born into a large
musical family in 1923, he began playing banjo when he was eight. His early playing was influenced by the music
of Sam and Kirk McGee and Arthur Smith, but he gradually developed his
own
approach to his instrument.
His technique
produces a unique rolling and
melodic effect that has been described as an old-time sound with a
touch of
bluegrass. Whereas dance rhythms
characterize much old-time music, finesse and intricacy are the strong
points
of Will’s instrumental work, and his repertory spans an unusual variety
of
traditional fiddle pieces and now-obscure popular tunes.
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James T.
“Tom” McCarroll, born in 1928, worked in city maintenance in Lenoir City
for over 30 years, all the while playing fiddle, guitar, and banjo. His daughter Tammie, the only one of
Fiddlin' Jim McCarroll's 13 grandchildren to take up music, was making
45 rpm
records in junior high school, recording Rockabilly songs and some of
her own compositions, as well as playing with her grandfather’s band
throughout his life, later performing with her father in the “Bonnie
Lou and
Buster” show on WJHL-TV in Sevierville, and at RV rallies and parks
from
Florida to Ohio. In recent years they've been frequent guests at
the Laurel Theater and on WDVX, performed at the Festival
of American Fiddle Tunes in July 2004, and released a CD Generations. County Records
recently reissued the complete 1928 recordings of Jimmy McCarroll's
group the Roane County Ramblers with notes by Bob Fulcher.
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Junious Marion "Jim" Turley grew up in a forest about
30 miles south of Charleston,
West Virginia.
He started
playing the fiddle when he was 8 years old after his grandfather,
Francis
Marion, told him take a fiddle outside and mock the birds. A
local
fiddler that walked everyday over the gap into Ridgeview Hollar to sell
eggs
was his next influence. Fernandez Holston would stop by to play
with Jim
and his grandfather Francis on his way back over the gap. In the
words of
Jim, "We didn't know we were playing music, it was just something to
do." |
Tim Worman was born in Springfield,
Ohio and raised in Michigan. He learned banjo from his grandfather, William
Worman, who
also played
fiddle and mandolin, and learned much of his fiddle style from Dr.
Terry
Allen. Tim is a highly regarded dance
musician and entertainer, accomplished in a variety of traditional
styles. He played with local bands the
Atomic City Rhythm Rascals and the Hudson Bay Company, and will be
accompanied
by Kyle Campbell for an unusual performance
at
Jubilee Festival. Tim and Kyle performed
at the grand opening of the Tennessee Theatre this Fall.
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 Henry Perry and Jamie Cameron of
Slow Blind Hill play
blues harp and acoustic guitar. Jaimie Cameron, a
veteran
of area bands the House
Rockers, Big Kabluey, and Jacqui and the Tumble Kings, adds his
signature
compositions to a danceable and distinctive sound. Henry Perry, a
Chattanooga native now resident in Knoxville, has played harp for 28
years and took early instruction from the great Opry star DeFord
Bailey. He counts James Cotton, Junior Wells, Little Walter and
Carey Bell among his significant influences. |
David Lovett started off playing bluegrass
and melodic
three-finger banjo in the 1970s, then discovered the old-time
clawhammer style
of North Carolina,
and now plays all of the above, along with a little guitar. He formerly
led the
Back Porch Rockers, voted Knoxville's best bluegrass band two years
running, and
was a member (along with Sarah Pirkle and MacDaddies bassist Rick
Wolfe) of
Deep Fried Possum. David believes that the role of the banjo is to
drive the
music and raise goosebumps. David's band the New
Lost Weasel Concern performs regularly at area dances.
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Anybody
remember the Newly Evicted Expo City
Ramblers? The Honey Wagon Dip
Sticks? They're still here, the
ever-lovin' Mumbillies, wearing the same hats and the one name
they
couldn't shake. Alleged to be the oldest
continuing band in Knoxville (by the second oldest, the HQ Band), the
Mumbillies have stuffed old time fiddle tunes and banjo riffs into
every crack
in the Laurel Theater's walls for the last quarter century
and more. |
 While known
chiefly as a fiddler, Danny Gammon
is equally at home playing guitar and singing with a mellow authority.
He works
at refining his musical taste and broadening his musical experience. He
enjoys
playing music with people of many tastes, and strives to be inclusive
musicians
of any level of talent. He is the
primary organizer of Music Therapy, an unlikely group of musicians who
meet
twice monthly for the pure joy of playing with other musicians.
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David Ball, the "genius of the
Mumbillies," is a renowned banjo maker and master of oldtime banjo
styles both traditional and historic. |
The Marble City
String Band is a new and welcome addition to local string band dance
music, appearing regularly at the Time Warp Tea Room and the Monday
night dance at the Laurel Theater. Their fiddler is Oak Ridge
native and music teacher Leslie Terry.
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 The Epworth Old Harp
Singers host a
community
singing from The
New Harp of Columbia, a manual of sacred songs first published in Knoxville in 1848, related to the better known Sacred
Harp singing tradition and emerging from the singing school
movement once
widespread throughout New England and
the
South. Copies of the 2001 edition will
be available for use.
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