There’s no business like show business
Story By Bob Pryor
Appeared in Cityview Magazine, Vol. 42, Issue 3 (May/June 2026)
Knoxville has long been an important training ground for nationally and internationally famous entertainers. Our little hotbed for undiscovered talent has produced an “A-Team” of stars you know well. Beginning with Roy Acuff, Homer and Jethro, Chet Atkins, Carl Smith, and Archie Campbell, Knoxville kept Nashville and the Grand Ole Opry well supplied with entertainers the country learned to love. The Everly Brothers made the jump from the Cas Walker program straight into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Kenny Chesney, Kelsea Ballerini, and Morgan Wallen are currently popular throughout the world. Dolly would have to be considered the queen of the Knoxville “A-Team” and has transcended all others. But do you remember the “B-Team”? Yes, I’m talking about those stars who never broke out to become headliners, those poor souls who kept the hearth fires burning and never gave up their day job.
As a child growing up in North Knoxville, I entered my grade school talent show and surprised myself by winning. Let’s just say it was an off year for talent at old Lincoln Park Elementary. The victory placed me in high demand for gigs on both sides of North Broadway, from Chickamauga Avenue to Walker Boulevard. I was an especially big hit in our family living room when guests came to visit. It also allowed me to grow up as a solid member of what we are now certain was the Knoxville “B-Team” and rub shoulders with many talented people in search of recognition and even stardom.
Joe Canady was a fireman and part-time clown that I saw perform at the new Fulton High School auditorium in 1953. He was great performing a slap-stick pantomime rendition of a Spike Jones novelty record with lots of funny lyrics, horns, whistles, and gunshots all at breakneck speed. Canady had a masterful sense of timing and, like most clowns, was very creative. At age 10, I decided I could do the same thing and used my act as an excuse to buy more early rock and roll phonograph records. In the 1950s, Joe Canady helped form the Knoxville Fire Department Clown Troupe and performed at parades down on Gay Street and at festivals around the county, and he helped form the first Knox County rescue team. He eventually became Assistant Fire Chief, but on stage he was a very funny comedian – one of the great “B-Teamers.” With Joe Canady as a role model and with a little practice, I officially entered show business at 11 years of age.
Irene Hayes Hodges was a radio personality during the 1940 to 1950 era and originated the Bugs Bunny Club stage show at the Bijou Theatre. Every Saturday morning the Bijou would fill with kids screaming for kids competing in a talent show on WBIR radio. There were singers, baton twirlers, loads of tap dancers, and presentations of the timeless art of elocution. The stage show came complete with a piano player and awards for the winners and door prizes for the audience. A Gene Autry or Tarzan movie followed. Ms. Hodges, with her hair in a bun, served as producer, director, and mistress of ceremonies for a show named, for some unknown reason, after a “wascally wabbit.” Today, Looney Tunes would sue Ms. Hodges for copyright infringement so fast it would make her bun spin. She also ran a successful “elocution school.” Of course, she loved me because I was full of elocution. Many early “B-Teamers” got their start with the help of Bugs Bunny and Irene Hayes Hodges on the stage of the Bijou Theatre.
Bill “Bobo” Croxdale was, hands down, the top clown ever to clown around in Knoxville. His children’s shows included magic, and, with the help of his assistant (wife) “Aunt Maggie” and his precocious daughter, they put on a great family show. They would end the show with little Billie Ann dressed in gingham and singing:
I’m just a country girl
A cornbread lovin’ country girl
I raise Cain on Saturday
But I go to church on Sunday.
For years Bobo was a radio musician and printer when not charming children at birthday parties and in area hospitals. By the way, as you may have guessed by now, there were no fulltime clown jobs in Knoxville in those days. Bobo was not to be outdone by Irene Hayes Hodges and starred at the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday mornings in the weekly gathering of “The Chipmunk Club.”
Lowell Blanchard became associated with WNOX radio station and served as the MC for its live noonday show, “The Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round,” and the Saturday night version, “The Saturday Night Barn Dance.” Blanchard and his stage show before a live audience featured many young “B-Teamers” like me, and he became a very popular radio personality from 1936 to 1964. Lowell Blanchard dabbled in politics and served as a city councilman and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor. He recorded a few records, but his voice was better suited to be the voice of the Knoxville Smokies baseball team.
Blanchard, like Cas Walker and Archie “Grandpappy” Campbell, always surrounded himself with talented singers, musicians, comedians, and personalities for a fun and lively show, but only a few moved on to the big time. “The Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round” troupe included “Hot-Shot Elmer” (Bill Carlisle), “Smilin’” Eddie Hill, Jamup & Honey, Roy Sneed, Red (Rector) and Fred (Smith), Martha Carson, “Sunshine Slim” Sweet, and a folk singer by the name of Gene Wardell. The Blanchard-promoted shows were not exclusively country music programs like Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. The “Merry-Go-Round” and the “Barn Dance” were more of a variety show with a stage band known as the Dixieland Swingsters featuring Jerry Collins on piano, Tony Musco on accordion, Harry Nides and his violin, drummer, Troy Hatcher, and Dave Durham on trumpet. The same band played galas and balls all over Knoxville as the Jerry Collins Orchestra for years after the “Merry-Go-Round” closed in 1961.
There was a traveling version of the “Merry-Go-Round,” and I made many trips with them on weekday nights to school auditoriums and manufacturing plants in western North Carolina and northern Georgia. People really enjoyed and turned out for those shows, but I slept my way through the fifth and sixth grades in school because of long, late-night trips back into Knoxville.
Harry Nides was a country fiddler who for 35 years played violin in the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. A Symphony Society Scholarship Fund was established in his name. Tony Musco was a funny man who always helped keep the show going. He taught accordion for years in Knoxville and could have been the fourth Marx brother.
Troy Hatcher became a favorite musician of Chet Atkins and in approximately 1957, when Atkins became producer for the Nashville division of RCA records, he invited Hatcher to come to Nashville and play drums on what became Chet Atkins’ first produced recording. Hatcher drummed behind Don Gibson, also from the “Barn Dance,” and the recording of “Oh, Lonesome Me” became what many consider the first recording of the “Nashville Sound” era. Hatcher had developed a prominent drum sound that became influential in Nashville where drums were not used in recordings and not typically allowed in country stage shows. Troy Hatcher moved country music away from the old school steel guitar sound and toward rhythm drums helping to create that country/pop sound that made “Music City.”
Life in the 1950s was simple and so was entertainment. Red and Fred, the Spivey Mountain Boys, always had traditional country songs and corny jokes like the one about the two old maids who Red saw being robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot coming into the show. The thief frisked the old maids up and down looking for cash and only got $2. When he complained, one old maid offered that if he would search them again she would write him a check. Red was recognized nationally as a mandolin virtuoso and Fred was a deadpan comic of the first order.
Pay was slight working for Lowell Blanchard, but the opportunity was large. I was the only kid in the sixth grade with a fulltime job and a bank account. Throughout the 1950’s and beyond, the “B-Teamers” mentioned here kept Knoxvillians entertained, both on the radio and in live performances. It was a golden era for local entertainment, and yours truly was lucky to have been a part of the fun. From the “Bugs Bunny Club” to the “Mid-Day Merry-Go-Round,” there truly was no business like show business. Bravo, “B-Team.” ◆
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