KHP_0331_CrazyTennesseans
Roy Acuff’s band, the Crazy Tennesseans, soon after their arrival in Nashville in 1938. Radio station WSM had a much broader reach than any Knoxville station, and was a lure to musicians who were ready for a national audience. At left is Clell Summey, former Knoxvillian who popularized the dobro, a recent invention which was previously little known. The others, from left to right, are guitarist Jess Easterday, guitarist and vocalist Imogene “Tiny” Sarrett, fiddler Roy Acuff, and bassist Red Jones. Acuff spent his childhood in Maynardville, but lived in Fountain City area for many years, during which time he began performing professionally, often at the downtown Knoxville radio studios of WNOX and WROL.
Image courtesy of the John Edwards Memorial Foundation Collection (2001) in the Eugene Earle Collection #20376, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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Imogene “Tiny” Sarrett was my grandmother’s (Bonnie Sanford Waldroup) first cousin. Their mothers, Martha Roland Sanford and Minnie Roland Sarrett, were sisters. Sadly, Imogene did not continue in the music field. From what I remember of my grandmother’s retelling, that was because her father, Grady Sarrett, did not think it a fitting profession. She moved to Nashville and worked in the insurance industry. I can vaguely remember her from very early in my childhood. She would come down from Nashville to visit my grandmother in Talking Rock (Pickens County), Georgia. In the early 70’s, Imogene was found deceased from a heart attack in her Nashville apartment. She is buried beside her mother in the Ryo church cemetery in Gordon County, in North Georgia.