Wayne County, Tennessee has a long history of gifted and notable singer/songwriters and musicians. Its convenient location between the famous Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals music centers, has drawn talented artists to the area over the years and inspired a developing rich musical culture drawing from different genres.
As the line from the song Nashville Cats tells us - "Nashville Cats play country music when they're two" - and, as you take this tour, you will note that many Wayne County musicians began playing as preschoolers.
Enjoy the Wayne County Walk of Fame.
This tour is built from the bios from the book: "The Heritage Project: A Collection of Musical Talent in Wayne County, Tennessee by Anita Miller. You may purchase a copy of this book at the Wayne County Museum.
The Walk of Fame tour is narrated by Nashville Radio Personality, Josh Kuhn.
Neal "Tywop" Jones
Neal “Tywop” Jones was born on March 22, 1922 near Scotts Hill, Tennessee. He learned guitar as a boy, and first worked at the radio station WTJS Jackson in 1940 with Eddy Arnold and the Johnson Brothers. He relocated to WREC Memphis and played lead guitar with Curly Fox and Texas Ruby, but later rejoined the Johnson Brothers at WKPT Kingsport. In May 1942, they moved to WDOD Chattanooga, where he also played fiddle. Tywop once said that he
could only play three fiddle tunes, and was somewhat embarrassed at one show to find Curly Fox in the audience. He was drafted in October 1942 and served as a radar operator during World War II. During these years, he played guitar with a service band. In March 1946, he returned to work with Arnold at WTJS, where he also incorporated comedy into his act. During the late 40s, he also worked with Billy Walker. In the early 50s, he became a specialty act at WMPS Memphis and toured with several acts including the Louvin Brothers, the Blackwood Brothers and Sonny James. He also became a regular on the Daily Shindig Show on WFAA Dallas. In 1954, Tywop joined Columbia Records and recorded several sessions for the label. Between 1954 and 1958, he worked radio and television at WBAP Fort Worth, Texas, where at times he co-hosted Barn Dance with Pat Boone and his own daily show called The Jones Place, which at one time had Willie Nelson as a regular cast member. In the late 50s, he also hosted Jones Junction on KTLA Shreveport, Louisiana and worked with Jimmie Davis. In the early 60s, he began to combine his performing with work as a disc jockey and presented radio and television programs on several California and Texas stations. In 1971, he moved to Nashville, presenting syndicated shows including Inside Nashville.
People in Wayne County immediately came to know and love Jones when he “retired” to Wayne County in the 1970s and became the disc jockey at the radio station in Waynesboro. Many can still fondly remember Tywop sitting in front of the big window at
the radio station on the square, calling out greetings to people across the airwaves that he saw driving or walking around the square. He continued to enjoy playing music and exchanging stories with his friends up until his death in 2005.
Ralph Davis
Ralph Davis was born on March 15, 1930 in rural Wayne County, Tennessee. He moved to Wayne County, Michigan in 1951. After being drafted into the army, Ralph was stationed in Missouri, playing western swing with a ten-piece band nightly. After his military service was over, Ralph returned to Detroit in 1957 and formed the Western Rhythm Boys with two of his brothers: Kenneth on the fiddle, Guy on bass guitar, and Ralph on guitar.
During late 1957, Davis cut two original songs for Jack Brown of Fortune Records in Detroit. “Searching For You” featured bass, drums, steel guitar, fiddle, and Davis’ vocal and rhythm guitar. “That’s all I played back then,” Ralph said. “That’s all I’ve ever played, mountain guitar. I play a little banjo and mandolin, but not enough to amount to anything. … my brother Kenny, he’s a great musician. A great mandolin player…he played fiddle fluently, and he plays a great guitar.”
In an interview conducted several years ago, Ralph said, “One night we was working this club in Ann Arbor (Michigan), I’ll never forget it. I had an old ’53 Buick, and it had those fluid (electric) windows in it, and somebody rolled one down behind, and we couldn’t get it up. Boy, I was freezing! On the way home, Marty (Robbins) was singing on the radio. We had tuned in to WSM, I always listened. I told Kenny, ‘Do you know what I’m gonna do?’ And he said, ‘Nah.’ I said, ‘I’m going back to Nashville.’ He said, ‘What for?’ I said, ‘I’m gonna get on the Opry.’ And he just laughed, ‘Oh yeah?’ I said, ‘Yeah. In two weeks, I’m leaving.’ And so I did. I went out there and gave them my notice, and you know what? He left before I did!”
Soon after moving to Nashville during the winter of 1958, Ralph and his brothers Kenneth and Guy rustled up some gigs playing music in the city’s active night club scene. “I had to get a job when I went down there – something to do besides the music,” recalled Ralph. “I got a job in a print shop. Then I started writing songs, and hanging around Tootsie’s. I met a lot of people there…next thing I knew, I had a song on an Ernest Tubb record!”
Ralph worked with bandleader “Big Jeff” (Grover Franklin Bess) and his Radio Playboys for a while. At that time, Big Jeff and his wife, Tootsie, owned Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge on Broadway, a hangout for musicians who worked the Opry stage at the Ryman Auditorium, which was located near a back door to the club.
“Tommy Hill was a great influence on me,” said Davis. “He liked some of the songs I’d written, so I made a demo at Starday Recording Studio. They started getting some of them recorded by Archie Campbell, Roy Drusky…then Tommy asked me once if I’d fill in for him at the Opry. He was a rhythm (guitar) player. I said, ‘Sure, man!’ I got to know all the acts down there. When Tommy decided he didn’t want to play on a particular night, I’d go take his place. One day he told me, ‘I’m gonna quit. Do you want the job?’ I said, ‘You bet I do.’ This was, like, 1960. I talked with the manager and he said, ‘Yeah, as far as I’m concerned.’ It wasn’t really called a ‘staff band’ at that time. It depended on the artists who wanted to use you. That went on until about ’68. But then one day they called the musicians in and told us they were making a staff band, and they were just gonna keep so many of us to play. Me and my brother Guy were included in it. Hal Love, Billy Linneman, Junior Husky, Pete Drake, Jimmy ‘Spider’ Wilson…there were ten of us that was kept there. We stayed there for the next forty years.”
1999 marked the end of an era at the Grand Ole Opry, when management asked most of the regular musicians to retire. After forty years, Davis left the stage of the Opry for the last time. “I got to work with some great people,” he said. “It was my desire, when I was young, growing up on the little farm over here. We had a battery-operated radio and I’d listen to the Opry every Saturday night.” A decade after leaving the Opry, Ralph Davis passed away in Waynesboro on October 29, 2010.
Earl "Peanutt" Montgomery
Earl “Peanutt” Montgomery is a songwriter, singer, musician, and Baptist minister. He was born on February 6, 1941, in Wayne County, Tennesee. He spent many years in the music industry as one of Nashville’s top songwriters and musicians. He was one of Nashville’s top songwriters and session players for many years. Montgomery began his career as the lead guitarist at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and has played with such legendary artists as Bob Dylan, Etta James and Patsy Cline. George Jones recorded 73 songs written by Montgomery, including many duets with Tammy Wynette. Other country artists such as Barbara Mandrell, Dolly Parton, Tanya Tucker, Hank Williams, Jr., and Merle Haggard have also recorded his songs. Montgomery was awarded the Arthur Alexander Songwriter’s Award by the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1997.
Earl toured with Michael Landon (Little Joe on Bonanza), worked with Red Foley, Cowboy Copus and the Willis Brothers on the road and on the Grand Ole Opry; played in the band with Billy Sherrill, one of Nashville’s top record producers, and Rick Hall of Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
Earl says that on May 17, 1976, his life was completely changed when he found the Lord Jesus Christ. Four years after Earl became a Christian, he began preaching and pastoring.
Make Collie
Make Collie is a singer, songwriter, actor, and advocate for diabetes research. His songs have been recorded by some of Country music’s most iconic recording artists including Tim McGraw, Martina McBride, Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus, Aaron Tippin and George Jones. His film and TV roles include “The Punisher” with Thomas Jane and John Travolta, “Fire Down Below” with Stephen Seagal, “Walker Texas Ranger” and the TV series “Nashville,” to name a few. Mark helped organize a celebrity race at the Nashville Motor Speedway bringing together the legends of NASCAR, the stars of Country Music and some of Hollywood’s most elite to raise money and awareness for diabetes research. As a result of this effort the Mark Collie Chair in Diabetes Research was formed at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
As a winner of the American Spirit Award, Mark is a strong supporter of our men and women in uniform having performed for them around the world. Mark believes in second chances, alongside his wife Tammy, they are committed to working with incarcerated men and women teaching and helping them find their voice through music expression programs designed to help prepare them for successful re-entry.
Loyd Howell
Loyd Howell was born in Waynesboro, Tennessee to a family of no great musical ambition. Beginning at the age of eight with a Gene Autry cowboy guitar, Loyd developed his music, first at the square dances in and around Waynesboro, then progressing to venues in Detroit where he later lived. He was said to play in the style of Maybelle Carter who "picked melody on the lower strings and strummed chords on the higher strings."
Melba Montgomery
While a successful singer in her own right, Melba Montgomery is perhaps best remembered in tandem with her string of duet recordings with the likes of George Jones, Charlie Louvin, and Gene Pitney. Born October 14, 1938, in Iron City, TN, and raised in Florence, AL, Montgomery gained her first exposure to music through her father, a fiddler and guitarist who taught vocal lessons at the town's Methodist church. At the age of ten, she was given her own guitar, and a decade later, she and her brother won an amateur talent contest held at Nashville radio station WSM's Studio C, which then housed the Grand Ole Opry. Montgomery's performance so impressed contest judge Roy Acuff that he asked the young singer to replace his departing lead vocalist June Webb; she accepted and toured with Acuff for the next four years.
After going solo in 1962, Montgomery released a self-titled LP and then teamed for a series of duets with Jones. Their first joint effort, a rendition of Montgomery's self-penned "We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds," reached the Top Three in 1963, and the follow-up, "What's in Our Heart"/"Let's Invite Them Over," was a two-sided Top 20 hit. Between 1963 and 1967, the Jones-Montgomery team generated a total of five Top 40 hits and two LPs (1966's Close Together and 1967's Let's Get Together), and while Montgomery maintained a successful solo career during the same period, she remained best known as a duet singer and so recorded an album of collaborations with Pitney titled Being Together in 1966.
After a few minor solo hits in the late '60s, in 1970 Montgomery found new partners in Louvin and producer Pete Drake. The duo's first hit, "Something to Brag About," was also their biggest, and after a string of singles and a 1971 album -- also titled Something to Brag About -- she and Louvin parted ways, although Montgomery did continue on with Drake. In 1974, he produced her lone number one hit, a rendition of Harlan Howard's "No Charge," culled from the LP No Charge. While she continued to record throughout the decade, subsequent albums like Don't Let the Good Times Fool You and Aching Breaking Heart found little commercial success, and by the 1980s Montgomery focused largely on touring and appearing at festivals. In 1988, she even published a cookbook of family recipes.
Glen Davis
Glendon Davis was the youngest of the band of brothers "The Davis Brothers".
Their father, Percy played guitar in his living room, Uncle Vernon attended school in Waynesboro with Earl "Peanutt" Montgomery (guitarist in the George Jones Band and writer of 38 songs sung by George Jones) and his sister Melba Montgomery (Singer and songwriter noted for her early duets with George Jones).
In the 40's Percy bought a Gene Autry guitar for Glen's brother Ralph. Glen became the drummer, Guy the bass, and Ken (whom the Gene Autry guitar was passed down to) played guitar. The Davis Brothers Band was born.