This painting was from a childhood memory. It represents of the days of live mountain music, when I could go down to the local radio station, WLSI and see musicians, such as The Lonesome Pine Fiddlers, as they entertained live on the air. I would see Mike Paxton, the radio personality, as he used his voice to be either his alter ego “Uncle Sleepy”, or the irascible “Old Hickory Nut” and introduce Cousin Ezra Cline, Curly Ray Cline, Melvin and Ray Goins and others.
I used the instruments to represent those who played them in the radio studios, on top of concession stands at the drive-in theaters and swimming pools, on the back of old hay wagons at the stockyards, in the gyms and auditoriums of local schools, in roller-rinks, VFW, MOOSE, and other meeting halls. Wherever a crowd could be gathered they could see and hear those instruments and groups such as the “Fiddlers”, “Flatt and Scruggs”, “Stanley Brothers”, “Osborne Brothers”, etc. and countless others.
I am proud and privileged to have witnessed this in my lifetime, as a
child; and to be a small part of it as a mediocre musician; as a young man and adult. I am also honored that that so many of those musicians still living have a print of this painting and that Roy Acuff had placed the original painting from his personal collection in the Roy Acuff Museum in Nashville, Tennessee.