Roy Acuff's Smokey Mountain Boys

For more than 60 years, Roy Acuff was called the King of Country Music. He was born in 1903 in the small town of Maynardville, TN. Originally he only wanted to play sports but his promising sporting career ended after suffering a severe sun stroke while fishing which ultimately led to a “nervous breakdown.” While he recuperated, he picked up a fiddle and began to learn to play. His father, besides being a Baptist preacher, was also a fiddler. He encouraged his son by giving him several records of regionally-renowned fiddlers.

Roy decided to be an entertainer and in 1932 Dr. Hauer's medicine show which toured the Southern Appalachian region, hired Acuff as one of its entertainers. The entertainers would draw a large crowd after which Dr. Hauer would sell his medicines and other concoctions for various and sundry maladies. Because of all this noise, Roy learned to project his singing voice which served him well later.

He wasn’t making much headway with the medicine show so he left and with a couple of guitarists he met, formed a band called the “Tennessee Crackerjacks.” They began to get Knoxville radio stations gigs and within a year after adding a bass to the group, they changed their name to the "Crazy Tennesseans."

The group moved to Nashville to audition for the Grand Ole Opry. When they finally made the grade after their second audition, Opry founder George Hay and producer Harry Stone suggested they again change their name. Acuff changed it to the Smokey Mountain Boys in honor of the mountains where he and his band members had grown up. The band recorded many songs and eventually heard the call of Hollywood to make movies. The Smokey Mountain Boys had a long and prosperous career. Roy Acuff died in Nashville on November 23, 1992.