Roy Acuff

That's the late, great Roy Acuff, the King of Country Music, in the middle (we're in his dressing room backstage of the Grand Ol Opry. The guitar player is none other than Bashfull Brother Oswald (Pete Kirby) who was in Roy's Smoky Mountain Boys since the '40s.

A video clip from this little jam session (probably in 1985 or 86) was used in a BBC show about country music, "A to Z Country," and it had just shown in England when we made our first trip to play there. We had no idea a video had ever been made -- lots of people have cameras backstage of the Opry -- and when we played one of our first dates in Oxford, someone said to Cathy, "Oh, we just saw you on the BBC." "No, I'm afraid not," was Cathy's reply. And subsequently we learned of the program and someone showed us a tape of it.

We got to know Roy and his band through Clyde Forester, brother of Howdy Forester, the great and influential fiddler who played in Roy's band for more than 30 years. Cathy met Clyde by chance at one of the Grand Masters Fiddle Contest in Nashville when she first played there with Ramona Jones.

Roy Acuff

Return to the photo index. Return to our main page.