Music Figures K – W

Gustavus Knabe

(1817-1906)

Born in Leipzig, Knabe grew up in one of the world’s most musical cities. He played French horn in Felix Mendelssohn’s orchestra, and befriended Robert and Clara Schumann. He came to America during the era of refugees from the Revolutions of 1848, first to the German-speaking refuge of Wartburg, Tenn. Living in several places before and during the Civil War, he led a Union brass band. Teaching music in Knoxville by 1865, he founded the Knoxville Philharmonic Society in 1867. Sometimes a composer, as of President Andrew Johnson’s Funeral March (1875), he taught music at the university, founding a brass band there. He also founded Knabe’s Academy of Music on Union Avenue, at which his talented daughter Pauline was a piano teacher. By 1889, Knabe was dubbed “The Father of Music in East Tennessee.”

Louvin Brothers

(1945-1963)

Guitarist Charlie (1927-2011) and mandolinist Ira Louvin (1924-1965), of Alabama, were already familiar with Knoxville as sorghum farmers who made the trek to Market Square as children, long before they moved here to perform on WNOX in 1949. It was only after moving to Nashville and joining the Opry that they recorded the gory murder ballad “Knoxville Girl,” one of their biggest hits. Performing on the edges of gospel and bluegrass, the Louvins shared an unusual brother harmony, with Ira taking the high register. After Ira’s early death in an automobile accident, Charlie was reluctant to play “Knoxville Girl,” but would do so at concerts when requested, as he did for a full house at the Tennessee Theatre in 1998. They were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2001.

Leola Manning

(1902-1995) ­

Better known after her death than she was during her long life, Leola Manning was a sensitive and religious young cafeteria worker who took the tradition of disaster ballads in a different direction. She wrote songs based on newspaper stories about recent murders (“Satan Is Busy in Knoxville”) and a fatal fire (“The Arcade Building Moan”). The six songs she cut at the St. James Hotel sessions in 1929 and 1930 are her only known recordings. Although she was moderately well-known as a singer in Knoxville in that era, fronting Leola Manning and Her Gang before an East Knoxville warehouse crowd of 3,000 in late 1930, she apparently stopped performing, turning to preaching, founding small churches in the area, and rarely speaking of her past. Soon after her death, her unusual recordings began appearing on multiple retrospective CD compilations internationally.

Harry “Haywire Mac” McClintock

(1884?-1957) 

McClintock is best known as an offbeat cowboy songwriter of songs “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!” and “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” His biography is murky, complicated by the fact that he was fond of telling tall tales about his early years. He claimed to have been born in Knoxville in 1882; other sources state that he was born in Uhrichsville, Ohio, in 1884. In any case, he did spend much of his youth here, and was associated with show business from an early age. His father was a theater carpenter, killed in a fall at Staub’s Theatre on Gay Street. By some accounts, McClintock was a street musician and/or vaudeville performer here, probably in the late 1890s. There’s evidence he was living here in his teens, during the period when he claimed he was involved in dramatic events in Africa and China.

Haywire Mac, “Big Rock Candy Mountain”

Granville “Stick” McGhee

(1918-1961)

Though reportedly born in Knoxville, the rebellious younger brother of Brownie, Stick McGhee probably spent little of his childhood here, growing up mostly in Kingsport. However, he’s listed as a Knoxville resident in 1940, when he married and worked at the Manhattan Café at the corner of Jackson and Central until he was drafted into the army in 1942. It was his interpretation of an army song that became famous as “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-dee-o-dee.” He became interested in the more aggressive style known as Jump Blues. It was his second recording of ”Drinkin’ Wine”, in 1949, that has been claimed to be one of the first true rock ‘n’ roll recordings. The younger McGhee died of lung cancer at age 43.

Stick McGhee, “Stick McGhee Drinkin Wine”

Grace Moore

(1898-1947)

The crossover opera/film star lived in urban Knoxville in her early youth, but omitted that perhaps unpleasant memory in her autobiography. She grew up mostly in Jellico, 60 miles to the north, but performed in Knoxville occasionally. Her unusual career straddled Broadway, the Metropolitan Opera, and Golden-Age Hollywood; she was the first actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for a musical role, in the 1934 film, One Night of Love. After her death in a plane crash in Europe, the movie about her life, So This Is Love, starred Kathryn Grayson, who sang Verdi’s “O Sempre Libera” at the film’s world premiere at the Tennessee Theatre in 1953. With much pageantry, the city named its first interstate cloverleaf for Moore, with Grayson and fellow singer Merv Griffin in attendance.

Grace Moore, “I Hear Your Voice (Oscar Straus)”

Dolly Parton

(b.1946)

A singing and songwriting phenomenon, Parton was born and raised in the foothills of the Smokies in Sevier County, about 35 miles southeast of Knoxville, but by the age of 12 was coming to town frequently, to perform on live radio WIVK, usually driven by her uncle, Bill Owens, a musician himself. Although she drew little press attention, she charmed the studio audiences and especially grocer/broadcaster Cas Walker, who put her on his TV show, and encouraged her to further her career in Nashville, as she did upon graduating from high school in 1964. She performed her first advertised concert in Knoxville in 1966, supporting a Johnny Cash show at the Civic Coliseum. In recent years she’s a frequent presence at Sevier County’s Dollywood, which opened in 1986. Since then, Parton has performed there much more than in Knoxville, but in 2024, she recorded and filmed a series of songs at the Bijou Theatre.

Dolly Parton, “Jolene”
Dolly Parton appears on the Cas Walker show in 1967

Ellen Reid

(b.1983)

The film composer and Pulitzer-winning creator of the 2018 opera Prism grew up in nearby Oak Ridge, where she began performing both as a musician and singer, graduating from Oak Ridge High School, after founding a camp for ethnic diversity through a Methodist church there. She studied at Columbia University and the California Institute of the Arts. Interested in the work of Knoxville writer James Agee, in 2014 she began working on a companion piece to Samuel Barber’s interpretation of Agee’s text, “Knoxville: Summer of 1915.” Reid’s work, “Knoxville: Summer of 2015,” performed by the UT Symphony Orchestra, debuted at the Tennessee Theatre that October. By 2019, her work was being performed by other musicians at Big Ears. She came in person to Big Ears, 2022, when she led an outdoor presentation of her own work “Soundwalk,” at Ijams Nature Center.

Ellen Reid, “Ellen Reid Sound Ensemble”

Lucas Richman

(b.1964)

A celebrated Hollywood film score conductor when he was recruited to be conductor of the KSO in 2003, Richman held that post until 2015, and during that period continued to compose and conduct for various orchestras. He was living in Knoxville in 2011 when he earned a Grammy for a “classical crossover” recording with London’s Royal Philharmonic. In recent years, he has been music director of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra, but he has maintained some local connections; in 2019, the nearby Oak Ridge Symphony premiered his “Symphony: This Will Be Our Reply.”

Lucas Richman, “This Will Be Our Reply”

 

Willie Sievers

(1909-1998) ­

Guitarist for the Tennessee Ramblers, a family country band most popular in the late 1920s and ‘30s, Sievers was reputedly the first female lead guitarist in country music to make records. Though based in Clinton, the Ramblers frequently performed on Market Square from the 1920s to the 1940s, and recorded at the St. James Hotel sessions of 19291930. Known for stunts like playing guitar behind her head, Willie was a special attraction, later acknowledging that she learned blues riffs from her friend Howard Armstrong, with whom she sometimes played in the streets. She performed and talked about their relationship in the film Louie Bluie. Interested in Hawaiian music from the late 1920s, she was still performing it when she appeared at the 1982 World’s Fair.

Tennessee Ramblers, “Don’t Put a Tax on Beautiful Girls”

Carl Smith

(1927-2010)

from Maynardville, Smith played on WROL frequently in the 1940s. In Nashville in the 1950s, he released a slew of #1 hits, including “Let Old Mother Nature Have Her Way,” and “Loose Talk.” With his former wife June Carter, he’s the father of later star Carlene Carter.

Swan Silvertones

(flourished 1940s) ­

Originally known as the Silvertone Singers, this remarkable gospel quintet (sometimes sextet) led by former Kentucky coal miner Claude Jeter (1914-2009) became known for their astonishing vocals, and influenced a younger generation of pop musicians mainly by way of their records. Originally formed in West Virginia, they came to Knoxville around 1940 on the invitation of Swan’s Bakery on Magnolia Avenue, which sponsored their radio broadcasts on WBIR by 1944. They were especially well known in Knoxville, performing live in churches and movie theaters through 1948. Although later based in Pittsburgh, they kept their association with Swan’s. Musicians as diverse as Paul Simon, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, John Fogarty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Al Green have acknowledged their unusual influence.

Swan Silvertones, “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep”

Gregory Tardy

(b.1966)

Tardy was born into an opera-singing family in New Orleans, but came to master the saxophone, and began performing in Knoxville around 2005, as he was recruited by UT’s jazz program. He has appeared on dozens of jazz recordings, known for his work with guitarist Bill Frisell.

Gregory Tardy, “Ask Me Now”

David Van Vactor

(1906-1994) ­

Indiana-born Van Vactor was already a prize-winning composer who had studied with Paul Dukas and Arnold Schoenberg when he came to Knoxville in 1947 to take the baton of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Also teaching flute at UT, he remained conductor of the KSO for 25 years, the longest anyone has held that post. Here he continued composing, and conducted several groups in major-label recording sessions during his time here, when he lived in a riverside house on Kingston Pike. A promoter of modern music with a group called the Van Vactor Five, he was a major figure in the youths of talented keyboardists and composers Gilbert and Richard Trythall, who would become known for their innovations in electronic music. He also encouraged young bassist Edgar Meyer, whose earliest concerts were Van Vactor projects.

David Van Vactor, “Symphony No. 5”

Pee Wee King

(1914-2000)

Born Julius Frank Anthony Kuczynski, King was a Western Swing accordionist and bandleader from Milwaukee who moved to Knoxville in 1936 when he found a berth on WNOXÕs Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round. He stayed only about a year before receiving an invitation to perform via WSMÕs bigger tower in Nashville, perhaps the first to see WNOX as a stepping stone to the Grand Ole Opry. He continued to appear on Knoxville radio in the 1940s, and later co-wrote the “Tennessee Waltz.”

Pee Wee King, “Tennessee Waltz”

Mac and Bob ­

“Mac and Bob” was the duo of Lester McFarland (1902-1984) and Robert Gardner (1897-1978). Blind musicians originally from Kentucky, they were living and performing in Knoxville by 1925, often at religious revivals, though they also performed some sentimental popular songs. Later claimed to be the first country-music duo, they made early recordings for Brunswick / Vocalion, and were getting significant radio play by 1927. By some accounts, their 200 recordings sold more than one million records. They remained in Knoxville until 1931, when Chicago’s WLS, one of America’s biggest stations, offered them a contract. During the height of Knoxville’s live radio era, they returned at least occasionally to perform on WNOX, but were based mostly in Chicago into the 1940s. McFarland returned to Knoxville in retirement.

Carl Martin

(1906-1979)

Born in Big Stone Gap, Va., Martin learned to play several instruments; an older brother was a well-known bassist. Landing in Knoxville in childhood, he connected with Howard Armstrong, and the two lived together in the same East Knoxville house for a time, as they roamed around town playing music for money where they could. They formed a group then known as the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, performing on record and also on the air on WROL, as well as in Prohibition-era nightclubs. Both Martin and Armstrong moved to Chicago in 1931, where Martin became well known for his distinctive guitar work, sometimes as a sideman for Tampa Red, Bumble Bee Sim, and others. Martin rejoined Armstrong and also contemporary Ted Bogan around 1970, and became known to a new generation as Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong. Declaring Martin to be “the greatest entertainer I ever played with,” songwriter Steve Goodman recorded a song, “Get It While You Can (The Ballad of Carl Martin).”

Walter “Brownie” McGhee

(1914?-1996) ­

Born in Knoxville, McGhee’s early years are obscure, but he was the son of marble and ironworker George McGhee and his wife, Zella. The McGhees were most associated with the Mechanicsville neighborhood on downtown’s northwest corner. His father, an itinerant factory laborer, eventually moved the family to Kingsport. He taught guitar to son Walter, who was partially disabled by polio at age 4. By some accounts he and his younger brother, Stick McGhee, played in string bands in Knoxville in the late 1930s. Brownie McGhee became well known as a performer by the 1940s, especially in partnership with harmonica master Sonny Terry. In their early years the two accompanied folk legend Woody Guthrie; McGhee and Terry later toured together and made multiple recordings. McGhee and Terry popularized their unconventional “Piedmont style” blues in shows in the 1950s and Õ60s, even internationally (earning them a mention in Irish songwriter Van Morrison’s lyrics). McGhee had an unexpected career in Hollywood, ranging from a cameo and soundtrack work in the 1957 classic, A Face in the Crowd, to a vivid speaking role in the 1987 thriller Angel Heart. Performing often in Knoxville in his later years, he was a featured performer at the opening of the 1982 World’s Fair.

Brownie McGhee, “Born and Livin’ With The Blues”

Edgar Meyer

(b.1960)

A remarkable and influential bassist relevant to multiple genres, Meyer has earned distinction in classical music, jazz, and bluegrass. Often performing and recording with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Meyer has also recorded with Emmanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Bela Fleck, and Chris Thile. Growing up in Oak Ridge, son of a bass player for the KSO, Meyer earned several distinctions in Knoxville performing competitions as early as 1969. Through most of the 1970s, he performed in the Knoxville Youth Orchestra at the Civic Auditorium. He has appeared in Big Ears festivals as well as with Yo-Yo Ma at a well-received outdoor concert at World’s Fair Park in 2023.

Edgar Meyer, “McGlynn’s Jigs”

Charlie Oaks

(flourished 1890-1935) ­

Claimed by author Charles Wolfe to be Tennessee’s first professional country musician, Oaks was a blind singer, guitarist, and harmonica player who reportedly invented the hands-free harmonica holder. Originally from Richmond, Ky., he migrated to Knoxville in his youth and sang his own songs, many of them mourning tragedies, and played them for strangers at the Southern Railway station and at Market Square. Despite his blindness, he earned money by selling printed “billets” with the lyrics of the songs he sang. He’s notable for his song, “The Southern Railroad Wreck,” unknown today as a tune, but its lyrics had appeared in folklore journals as early as 1909. He later made a few records for Vocalion in 1925 but was not as successful as some younger peers.

Charlie Oaks, “Drunkard’s Dream”

Red Rector

(1929-1990)

His often comedic persona on television, partly with the duo Red and Fred, masked the fact that he was one of the great country mandolinists of his era. A North Carolina native, Rector performed on Asheville radio before migrating to Knoxville in the late 1940s. A master mandolinist known for his speed, Rector performed bluegrass-style music alongside Charlie Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs before becoming better known as an accompanist to Carl Story in the 1950s. One of the few successful country recording artists who opted to stay in Knoxville, the outgoing performer remained a familiar figure at a variety of public events, including the 1982 World’s Fair.

Red Rector “Pickin’ at the Paradise”

George Reneau

(1902-1938) ­

A blind street singer and guitarist, Reneau was one of the musicians selected by Sterchi Brothers to travel to New York to make records in 1924. He was the first to record a version of the standard, “On Top of Old Smoky.” He enjoyed a couple of years of national fame for multiple recordings he made between 1924 and 1926, and sold more than 10,000 disks through Sterchi Brothers alone, but claimed he received no royalties. Friends believed his career was a victim of the popularity of radio. Frequently arrested for begging or drunkenness, he became the focus of a movement to legalize street performing for money, but was nearly forgotten before he turned 30. He died of tuberculosis at age 36.

George Reneau, “On Top Of Old Smoky”

Earl Scruggs

(1924-2012)

One of the greatest banjoists in history, Scruggs was born in Western North Carolina, but came to Knoxville during its radio heyday in the early 1940s, playing with Lost John Miller and his band on WNOX. Bill Monroe enlisted him for the classic lineup of the Blue Grass Boys in Nashville. Scruggs and Overton County guitarist Lester Flatt (19141979) had differences with Monroe, mutinied, and came to Knoxville to perform on WROL with their new band, the Foggy Mountain Boys. Flatt & Scruggs made their first bluegrass records at the WROL studio in the Holston Building in 1948. They moved to Knoxville for a time, living at the same address, with their respective wives, on Rutledge Pike, just northeast of town. They were frequent performers on Knoxville radio and TV into the 1950s before returning to Nashville, and greater fame.

Flatt & Scruggs, “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”

Arthur Q. Smith born James Arthur Pritchett

(1909-1963)

Georgia-born, Kentucky-raised Smith came to Knoxville during the mid-‘30s boom to perform on radio, and connected with several more successful country musicians who purchased his songs, often for minimal fees and no promise of credit. He spent much of his adult life in trouble with the law, often for alcohol-related offenses, and sitting at the bar at the Three Feathers Café at Gay and Jackson, drinking beer and writing songs. He died penniless at age 53, in a cheap room on nearby West Vine. Half a century after his death, the German label Bear Family Records, led by local music historians Bradley Reeves and Wayne Bledsoe, released The Trouble with the Truth, a compilation of dozens of hit songs attributed to Smith, earning a Grammy nomination.

Arthur Q. Smith, “Arthur Q. Smith – The Trouble With The Truth”

Peter Staub

(1827-1904) ­

An ambitious Swiss-born developer who had attempted to found a refuge for Swiss expatriates in the Cumberlands, Staub arrived in Knoxville just after the Civil War. He built Staub’s Opera House, the city’s first theater adequate for large musical events, in 1872. Twice elected mayor of Knoxville, he also served as Swiss consul here. His son, Fritz (1861-1934), was eventually manager of the theater, which was a center of musical performance for about 80 years.

Gilbert Trythall

(1930-2023)

The older of the two talented Trythall brothers was seeing his compositions performed in public with the KSO conductor David Van Vactor when he was only 19. His first symphony was released on record in collaboration with the KSO in 1961. After serving for a period as music director at Carter High, then earning a doctorate in music at Cornell, he taught at Nashville’s Peabody College, where he began experimenting with electronic synthesizers, getting to know and collaborate with sonic inventor Robert Moog. Trythall gave a public demonstration of the Moog synthesizer at UT in April, 1971. A year later, he released an album called Switched On Nashville: Country Moog, a popular hit. His 1973 book, Principles and Practice of Electronic Music, has been described as the first guide to electronica for a general audience. In the 1970s and ‘80s, he organized the Electronic Music Plus Festival, an avant-garde convention held on several campuses nationwide—including once at UT during the 1982 World’s Fair.

Gilbert Trythall, “Switched On Nashville Country Moog”

Cas Walker

(1902-1998)

A colorful grocer and politician best remembered as a radio and TV host and country-music impresario, Walker grew up in mountainous Sevier County, working in the coal fields of Kentucky before settling in Knoxville around 1926, where he created a chain of grocery stores. By 1931, he was advertising his groceries with a musical show on WROL, originally called “Cas Walker’s Novelty Band.” After World War II, his show “The Farm & Home Hour” featured a wide variety of talent in multiple genres. By some accounts, Walker was more open to bluegrass, a new form that had not caught on at mainstream stations. Although he hosted hundreds of acts, including the Everly Brothers, with whom he parted ways under unpleasant circumstances, he’s best known for his acknowledged role launching the career of fellow Sevier Countian Dolly Parton, who was only about 12 when she began singing on his show on WIVK, and today is grateful for his insightful help.

“Cas Walker: A Short Story”

Dolly Parton appears on the Cas Walker show in 1967


 

PHOTO CREDITS
Every effort has been made to identify photographic sources. Thank you to all of the following:

Grace Moore, Cas Walker (KHP), Brownie & Stick McGhee, Willie Seivers, Arthur Q. Smith, Swan’s Silvertones, Tennessee Ramblers, (Tennessee Archive of Moving Image & Sound); Leola Manning (WDVX); Dolly Parton (Dollywood Foundation), Flatt & Scruggs, (Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); Peter Staub (City of Knoxville)  Gilbert Trythall, David Van Vactor (University of Tennessee Libraries),

Wikipedia Images

Carl Martin, Pee Wee King, Louvin Brothers (unknown), Harry McClintock (Bay Area Radio), Ellen Reid (James M. Daniel); Lucas Richman (LeDor Publishing), Ellen Reid, Uncle Dave Macon, Carl Martin (unknown).