Bugg Stories vol. 8

Roy O'Connor presents the Roy Acuff Show. Roy Acuff was the popular host of the RC-Cola segment of the Grand Ole Opry, and in 1954, the company asked him and his smokey mountain boys to record 15 minute radio shows. The Grand Ole Opry star is Roy Acuff and all the smokey mountain boys, the Duke of the Ducca, Brother Oswald, Jimmy Reddle, Pap and the Jugban, and many of these including years truly cousin Louis Barters. My grandfather was friends with Mildred and Roy, and was really good friends with Hadi Farrister who played fiddle with Roy and Bashel Brother Oswald. Mike Armistad grew up hearing firsthand stories of Roy Acuff and the smokey mountain boys, and searched for years for the lost radio shows. It was just so colorful, you know, as a kid growing up hearing your grandfather tell these

stories of these hillbillies, you know, coming to my grandfather's bait shop and hanging out and playing music out on the side of the road to draw business into his bait shop. Though no written records of the sessions exist, Mike Armistad guesses the RC-Cola company probably sent out 500 to 1000 sets of the shows to radio stations across the South. The transcription discs 16 inch acetates held one show on each side. After airing the radio transcriptions, stations were supposed to send the discs back to the local RC-Boddler, who'd often give them out his gifts. Some stations did, and some didn't, and that's where Mike Armistad got lucky, by getting his hands on one of the five existing sets left. After two years of negotiation with the Acuff estate and RC-Cola, the first volume of

the set will be released on CD this week. With nothing more than a playlist, Roy Acuff and his Smokey Mountain boys gathered around one microphone and WSM's Studio C in the National Life and Casually Building in downtown Nashville. Mike Armistad says it's easy to see how Acuff gained the nickname, One Take Ac. 52 shows. The most incredible thing about it is that they never repeated a song, period. Instrumental, vocal, nothing was repeated. Man it's over 167 songs that they did, and they recorded it all in less than a week. Country music historian Charles Wolf. In 1954, the members of Roy Acuff Smokey Mountain boys were at their absolute peak.

They'd been together for a while, they knew what they were doing. You had the best band he ever had with Howdy Forrester and Bashful Brother Oswald and Jimmy Riddle and Joe Zinkham playing guitar, Curly Rose playing bass. Unlike Acuff's records at the time, Wolf says these shows best represent what a Roy Acuff concert was like. Starting from the jug band to gospel music to comedy. No show was complete without pitching the product.

R.C. was a late-comer to the cola scene, though Coke and Dr. Pepper had strongholds in the South. Acuff's commercials had an impact. Charles Wolf remembers one visit to his grandmother's. My grandmother was one of the great Roy Acuff fans who ever lived down in the Ozarks, would religiously drink Dr. Pepper. They had bottles of Dr. Pepper on those days with a clock on it, and the clock said 10, 2, and 4. And the legend was that was when you were supposed to have your Dr. Pepper. R.S. grandmother said that's when I had my pepper. So when I was about seven or eight years old, I was down at grandma's to stay the day, and it came time for what I thought would be the Dr. Pepper.

And grandma went to the refrigerator and she pulls out an R.C. And I said, Grandma, this isn't Dr. Pepper, is it? And she said no, but she says my boy Roy is now selling R.C. cola. And she said I was listening to him the other night, and it sounded like this was a pretty good drink. So I'm starting to drink R.C. cola now. With R.C. sponsorship, Roy and the boys would hit the road Monday through Thursday traveling across the South, they'd head back to Nashville for the opera on Saturday, and some shows Sunday at Roy's Dunbar Cave Resort near Clarksville. Then back out on the road the following week, handing out free R.C.s as they went along. By 1954, A.C.F. was a national star, a millionaire, raking in money from his records, movies, and the A.C.F.R.O.'s publishing company. Why would the most successful musician and businessman in the industry play more than 200 dates a year? Charles Wolf suspects it's because he had just switched from the Columbia label to a new West Coast upstart, Capital Records. Capital didn't really understand Roy's music very well. They even put electric guitar on some of his songs, which is the only time that's ever

happened. So Roy was being forced to do things that would become hits, and he recorded some good stuff for Capital, but he also recorded some God-awful silly stuff. One of his songs that he recorded was called 16 Chickens and a Tamberine. And somebody at Capital thought this had the potential to become a hit. So in a sense, he was being frustrated because he wasn't being allowed to do the kind of traditional country music that he knew he did best. And so on these transcriptions, he is able to kind of kick his shoes off and go down home and do the kind of stuff he really wanted to do. By this time, Roy was not recording much gospel material, but he always used it in his

show, the song that brought him to the grand old opera was a great speckle bird. And he routinely used one or two good gospel numbers to conclude his show. These very seldom got recorded. Here they all are, one on almost every show. And it's not only Roy singing lead, but you have people like Oswald singing that achingly high tenor, and you have people like Joe Zinken adding the bass, and it's just a dandy group. In all, once the complete set is released, as many as 50 to 60 new recordings of Roy A.Cuff and the Smokey Mountain Boys will be available for the first time, Charles Wolf. For a country music fan, finding these transcriptions is kind of like finding Ernest Timmingway's suitcase full of law short stories that he lost in Paris. We knew that they existed, but to actually have them produced and ready and available to

a public is really something special. Mike Armistad, through his Army Music label, will release one volume of the Roy A.Cuff RC Cola shows every three months. Volume 1 will be in record stores soon, and it is available now on the web at armymusic.com. That's rmemusic.com. For Nashville Public Radio, I'm Anita Bug. Volume 1, volume 1 say, I ain't got time to get you down here on the way. Now Miss Mary, take your seat and you'd better keep going. I ain't got time to get you down with this new volume 1, volume 1 say, I ain't got time to get you down here on the way. I ain't got time to get you down here on the way. If I had a meeting, that is fine as I could so. I told him Betty too, my shirt, down the road I'd go.

Volume 1, volume 1 say, I ain't got time to get you down here on the way. Volume 1 say, I ain't got time to get you down here on the way. I ain't got time to get you down here on the way. They got that new volume.