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Knoxville Records Before the '40s

For years, Knoxville recordings before World War II weren't much better than rumors; you'd occasionally hear them mentioned as having influenced someone who's much better known, but we didn't know anyone who had actually heard one. They were all on 78, of course, and even if you had a Victrola to play them on, most were hard to find. CD compilations have changed all that. Not all of the Knoxville cuts on these records are truly brilliant, but each CD is worth a good listen and belongs in the library of every Knoxville audiophile.

My Rough & Rowdy Ways (Yazoo 2040, 1998). This fascinating collection brings together early blues and country pieces, all of which deal with breaking the law, from killing to whoring to drinking Sterno. Several are daring in their lyrical content, and reflect how rapidly American music was changing during this explosive period (the 1920s and early '30s). The preponderance of East Tennesseans on these two volumes hints at this region's contribution.

Volume One features several East Tennesseans, including Johnson City acts the Grant Brothers and the Magic City Trio plus Uncle Dave Macon's rousing "Way Down the Old Plank Road" mentions Knoxville as "a beauty."

The Knoxville-proper contributors are on Vol. 2. The obscure local singer Haskell Wolfenbarger's "Sailing Out on the Ocean" (1929) is a poignant waltz about going off to sea, and is great fun to listen to, even if you don't take it quite as solemnly as the singer seems to. The chorus ends, "if I get drunk or drownded, no one to grieve for me..." On the same disk is George Reneau's "Jesse James" (1924) one of the most available recordings made by this Knoxville street singer who was billed in New York as "the blind minstrel of the Smoky Mountains." This particular recording is less interesting as a song than it is as a historical artifact; Reneau was among the very first country musicians to make records, and this is among his earlier recordings. He made about 70 of recordings in New York in the '20s, but fashion and the Depression weren't on his side; when Reneau died, in 1933, he'd returned to the streets of Knoxville, playing for nickels. Recently rediscovered, Reneau now has pieces on other recent compilations, including one devoted to ballads about the Titanic.

Jazz the World Forgot, Vol. 1 (Yazoo 2025, 1996). If Knoxville's not known for big-band jazz, it's not Maynard Baird's fault. This suave Knoxville-based bandleader of the '20s and '30s may not have been a major figure in the development of swing, but his band, known as the Southland Serenaders, brought hundreds of jazz-age audiences to their feet from New Jersey to Ohio and they were, if briefly, radio stars. The only readily available recording we know of is his signature tune, "Postage Stomp," apparently recorded at the St. James Hotel in Knoxville in 1930. It's a jumpy, lighthearted little dance number, the sort of thing you'd expect to hear in the nightclub scene in a screwball comedy from the very dawn of talkies. It's mainly brass, about a dozen pieces, but that's Baird himself keeping the headlong pace on the banjo. It's one of 20 cuts, mostly from the South, on this entertaining compilation.

Rural String Bands of Tennessee (County Records, CO-CD-3511, 1997). This interesting collection not only has good selections from several early Knoxville-area bands, like the Roane County Ramblers and the Tennessee Ramblers, which included Willie Seivers, perhaps the first female guitar soloist in country music. But at least a couple of these cuts were actually recorded in Knoxville, at the legendary Vocalion sessions at the St. James Hotel on Wall Ave. in 1929-30. Chief among these is a hilarious hoedown by Ridgel's Fountain Citians called "Baby Call Your Dog Off (Please)." Also included is another novelty tune that shows the trans-racial ferment that was brewing in Knoxville in the '20s, "Preacher Got Drunk And Laid His Bible Down." It's the Tennessee Ramblers' version of a piece they originally performed by fellow Knoxville musicians Martin, Bogan, and Armstrong (see Martin, Bogan & Armstrong), in the 1920s, before the recording industry started dumping all white string bands in the "country" bin and all black string bands in the "blues" bin.

Finally, this CD includes a real oddity, the Perry County Music Makers' "I'm Sad and Blue"—not because the song is odd, although it is indeed very odd, a first-generation German brother-and-sister team playing a guitar-and-zither duet—but because it's a rare example of a Middle/West Tennessee act that traveled to Knoxville, not Nashville, to record.

—Jack Neely