Music

The Acuff-Rose music publishing company was founded by Roy Acuff and Fred Rose and officially incorporated on October 13, 1942. The company's start-up capital included $25,000 from Acuff (which was never touched) and $2,500 from BMI, a performance rights organization.…

Roy Acuff, known as the "King of Country Music" due to his long association with the Grand Ole Opry, was born in Maynardville, Union County, on September 15, 1903. At age sixteen, he moved with his family to a Knoxville…

The most successful commercial artist in country music for the years immediately after World War II was Eddy Arnold. Arnold's success in country music sales centered on two eras: the period from 1945 to 1953, when he dominated country sales…

Chet Atkins, one of country music's greatest instrumentalists, producers, and promoters of the Nashville Sound, was born the son of a fiddler in Luttrell, Union County in 1924. He took up guitar at an early age but first performed on…

DeFord Bailey, a virtuoso harmonica player who won fame on the early Grand Ole Opry, has a more significant place in history as the first African American to win fame in the field of country music as well as blues.…

Stretching from the Mississippi River toward the east, Beale Street is Memphis's most famous avenue. On the infamous section of Beale Street between Main and Lauderdale Streets, the "Blues was born," and as Beale Street's reputation for a culturally rich,…

Derived from a 1974 phonograph album entitled Desitively Bonnaroo by the colorful and charismatic New Orleans performer Dr. John (Malcolm John Rebennack Jr.), the word Bonnaroo is Creole slang for “having a good time.” It also is short for “The…

Owen Bradley, musician and producer, was one of the pioneers of the Nashville recording industry and a developer of the Nashville Sound. Born in Westmoreland, Sumner County, Bradley began his musical career early by assembling musical groups to play at…

Born July 2, 1897, on a farm near Somerville, William H. Brewster was the oldest of sharecroppers William and Callie Polk Brewster’s eight children. In 1915 Brewster entered Memphis’s Howe Collegiate Institute and studied under the Reverends T. O. Fuller…

The term Bristol Sessions is the common name now given one of the most famous events in American popular music history. In July 1927 producer Ralph Peer recorded the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers in a makeshift recording studio in…

Charles Faulkner Bryan was one of Tennessee's greatest composers, musicians, and collectors of folk music. Bryan was born on July 26, 1911, in McMinnville, the second of Clarence Justus and Allie May Bryan's five children. At the age of nineteen…

Lucie Campbell-Williams, composer, educator, and activist, was born on April 3, 1885, in Duck Hill (Carroll County), Mississippi, the youngest of Burrell and Isabella (Wilkerson) Campbell’s nine children. Her father worked for the Mississippi Central Railroad and her mother worked…

Archie Campbell, nationally known comedian and country music artist, was born in Bulls Gap, a small railroad town in Hawkins County. He began his performing career on several Knoxville radio stations. In the 1930s Campbell was a creator of the…

Guy Carawan and wife Candie Anderson Carawan are noted for their long association with Highlander Research and Education Center in East Tennessee, their work in documenting southern folk music, and their participation in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.…

Allen D. Carden was a singing-school teacher and compiler of tunebooks using four-shape notation. He compiled and published The Missouri Harmony (St. Louis, 1820, though printed in Cincinnati), probably the most widely used tunebook in the southern and western United…

One of the most influential blues artists of the twentieth century, Leroy Carr was born in Nashville around 1905. Like many blues players of his era, Carr died a young man, but his imprint on American music is visible through his lasting…

Johnny Cash, musician, actor, and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, to Ray and Carrie River Cash on February 26, 1932. After graduating from high school in Dyess, Arkansas, in 1950, Cash bounced…

The Center for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University is a Distinguished Center of Excellence, established in 1984 during the administration of Governor Lamar Alexander. The center’s mission is to document and showcase Appalachia’s past, celebrate its…

The Center for Popular Music was established at Middle Tennessee State University in 1985. Its mission is to foster research and scholarship in American popular music and to promote an awareness of and appreciation for America's diverse musical culture. The…

The Center for Southern Folklore, located in Memphis, is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to documenting and presenting the people and traditions of the South. Through films, video tapes, records, books, exhibits, and festivals, the center presents the life of indigenous…