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The Southern Moonlight Entertainers recorded 10 sides for the Brunswick-Vocalion recording sessions at the St. James Hotel. They were the second act to record on Aug. 27, 1929, the first day of the sessions, following the Tennessee Ramblers. The group was made up of Coal Creek (now Rocky Top) fiddler George Rainey and his sons, Albert, Willie, and Marvin “Dude” Rainey, along with fiddler Luther Luallen.
Coal miners by profession, music was a crucial part of the Raineys’ lives at home and as part-time entertainers. Marvin’s son, Virgil Rainey, remembers his grandfather “won every fiddle contest he ever entered.” “Every time he worried about something, he’d get his fiddle out and start playing,” Virgil says.
Before recording in Knoxville, the brothers had recorded in Ashland, Ky., with the Cumberland Mountain Entertainers. They were some of the earliest stars of WNOX; flyers from the 1930s announce them as the Famous Rainey Brothers. Marvin was killed in a car accident when he was 34, an event that so affected Willie that he gave up music.
“They all played their whole lives, except Willie,” Virgil says. “Willie took his banjo to the pawn shop and never did play no more.”
George’s house burned years ago, destroying much of the material related to the Raineys’ music career. But Virgil and Albert’s daughters, Becky and Mary, saved some of the family memorabilia. A scrapbook full of hand-written lyrics, flyers, posters, newspaper articles, ads, photographs, letters, and telegrams is an invaluable document of not just the Raineys’ lives in the 1930s and ’40s. It also gives some insight into the activities of early WNOX stars like Roy Acuff, Archie Campbell, Kentucky Slim, and Arthur Q. Smith.
Perhaps most intriguing is a series of telegrams and letters concerning the Brunswick-Vocalion records. In a letter from July 1929, Hal Petty, the traffic manager of Sterchi Brothers, the local company that facilitated the recordings, asked George Rainey to travel to Knoxville and make arrangements for his band. The following year, Petty followed up: “Dear Sir, The Brunswick Company are coming to Knoxville very soon to make some more phonograph records. Please advise if your band is still intact and give your telephone number.” George replied a few days letter, asking how many pieces Brunswick wants.
Petty told George to prepare eight to 10 songs. “We do not want any blues nor late popular pieces, strictly old time, hilly billy selections.” He added, “Your other records would have been better if you had prepared for them last time,” a curious statement considering Vocalion released more records by the Raineys from the 1929 sessions than any other act. On April 4, 1930, the Southern Moonlight Entertainers would record only two songs, just before Leola Manning approached the microphone to sing “The Arcade Building Moan” and “Satan Is Busy in Knoxville.” (It’s only natural to wonder if the Coal Creek old-time musicians and the East Knoxville blues singer met or exchanged words.) On April 25, George received a letter from Brunswick acknowledging that the recordings had been accepted, with a payment of $30 for the two sides enclosed.
The Rainey children had another surprise. Five acetate discs Marvin recorded in the late 1940s feature him playing with, among others, Fiddlin’ Bob Cox, a veteran of local fiddling contests. Albert Rainey’s voice retains its high, gentle quality as he works his way through 10 songs, including Hank Williams’ “Please Don’t Let Me Love You” and Bob Wills’ “Stay a Little Longer.”
Virgil has a similar tone in his singing voice, as he demonstrated when he recently performed one of his father’s favorite gospel tunes, “Precious Memories,” at the opening of the Knoxville Sessions-themed Come to Make Records exhibit at the East Tennessee History Center. Becky, Mary, and members of the extended family were also in attendance, as were a few dozen other relatives of sessions performers, including Leola Manning’s daughter and granddaughter. It was the first, and possibly the last time this group of people came together to celebrate events that happened almost 90 years ago. Many of them stuck around for a group photo, and it was an unlikely, moving, and slightly surreal moment.
Eric Dawson is Audio-Visual Archivist with the Knox County Public Library's Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, and with Inside the Vault combs the archive for nuggets of lost Knoxville music and film history to share with us. He's also a longtime local music journalist, former A&E editor of the Knoxville Voice and a board member of the nonprofit performance venue Pilot Light.
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