Uncle Jimmy Thompson
   HOME
*





Uncle Jimmy Thompson
Jesse Donald "Uncle Jimmy" Thompson (1848 – February 17, 1931) was an American old-time fiddle player and singer-songwriter. He is best remembered as the first performer to play on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry (then called the WSM-AM ''Barn Dance''), appearing with founder and host George D. Hay on the evening of November 28, 1925. The positive response generated by Thompson's performance would be an important influence on the show's creative direction in its formative years. While Thompson made only a handful of recordings late in his life, his cantankerous and eccentric personality and his fiddle skills have made him one of the best-known icons of early country music.Charles Wolfe, "Uncle Jimmy Thompson." ''The Encyclopedia of Country Music: The Ultimate Guide to the Music'' (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 537. Early life Thompson was born in Smith County, Tennessee (near the town of Baxter) in 1848. Around 1860, his family moved to Texas, and Thompson began pl ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Smith County, Tennessee
Smith County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 census, the population was 19,166. Smith County is located in the region of the state known as Middle Tennessee. Its county seat is Carthage. The county was organized in 1799 and is named for Daniel Smith, a Revolutionary War veteran who made the first map of Tennessee and served as a United States senator . Smith County is part of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Murfreesboro–Franklin, Tennessee, Franklin, TN Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area, Metropolitan Statistical Area. History Smith County was established in 1799 from a portion of Sumner County, Tennessee, Sumner County, and was named for Daniel Smith, a U.S. Senator and former Secretary of the Southwest Territory. The location of the county seat was hotly contested between Bledsoesborough (near modern Dixon Springs) and William Walton's ferry and tavern at the confluence of the Caney Fork and the Cumberland Riv ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


County Records
County Records was a Virginia-based independent American record label founded by David Freeman (music historian), David Freeman in 1963. The label specialised in old-time music, old-time and traditional bluegrass music. History Old-time music collector David Freeman started the County Records label in 1963 to focus on music from the rural Southeastern United States. He told an interviewer that he selected the name "County (United States), County" because it evoked the rural, regional and local aspects of old-time music. Living in New York, Freeman avidly collected recordings from Southern musicians including old-time, bluegrass music, bluegrass, country music, country and blues artists. His new label's first release was a reissue of old-time music drawn from his personal collection of 78 rpm recordings from the 1920s and 1930s by Charlie Poole, the Leake County Revelers, Crockett's Mountaineers and similar string bands. ''A Collection of Mountain Fiddle Music'' (County 501) was ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Louisville, Kentucky
Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. Named after King Louis XVI of France, Louisville was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark, making it one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachians. With nearby Falls of the Ohio as the only major obstruction to river traffic between the upper Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, the settlement first grew as a portage site. It was the founding city of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which grew into a system across 13 states. Today, the city is known as the home of boxer Muhammad Ali, the Kentucky Derby, Kentucky Fried Chicken, the University of Louisville and its Cardinals, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, and three of Kentucky's six ''Fortune'' 500 companies: Humana, Kindred Healthcare, and Yum! Brands. Muhamm ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Hartsville, Tennessee
Hartsville is a town in Trousdale County, Tennessee, United States. It is the county seat of Trousdale County, with which it shares a consolidated city-county government. The population of Hartsville was 11,615 as of 2020. Hartsville now shares with Trousdale County a consolidated city-county government by virtue of a referendum which passed in Trousdale County in 2000. Despite the city-county government, under Tennessee law, Hartsville is also considered to be a distinct municipality. Trousdale County High School is located here, as well a Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology campus operated by the Tennessee Board of Regents. Trousdale County is one of two counties in Tennessee to have legalized parimutuel betting on horse racing, but no group has ever stepped forward to build a racetrack. Hartsville is located slightly north of the Cumberland River and is approximately fifty miles northeast of Nashville as well as home to Robert Joines. In 1977, the Tennessee Valley Auth ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Uncle Bunt Stephens
John L. "Bunt" Stephens (February 2, 1879 — May 25, 1951), known as Uncle Bunt, was an American Old-time fiddle player. After rising from relative obscurity in 1926 to win a nationwide fiddle contest hosted by automobile magnate Henry Ford, Stephens went on to record several tracks for Columbia Records and made several guest appearances on what would later become the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville before retiring to his farm near Lynchburg, Tennessee.Don Roberson,John L. "Uncle Bunt" Stephens. Retrieved: 12 December 2008. His style of fiddle playing is believed to resemble a style that was popular before the American Civil War.Andrew Kuntz,Sail Away Ladies" Retrieved: 12 December 2008. Life Early life Stephens was born in Bedford County, Tennessee on February 2, 1879 (although some sources suggest he was older). He was orphaned at a young age and raised by his aunt in Flatcreek, a small community located about halfway between Lynchburg and Shelbyville. When he was 11, h ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lynchburg, Tennessee
Lynchburg is a city in the south-central region of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is governed by a consolidated city-county government unit whose boundaries coincide with those of Moore County. Lynchburg is best known as the location of Jack Daniel's, whose famous Tennessee whiskey is marketed worldwide as the product of a city with only one traffic light. Despite the operational distillery, which is a major tourist attraction, Lynchburg's home county of Moore is a dry county. The population was 6,461 at the 2020 census. Lynchburg's connection to Jack Daniel's is spoofed in a 2018 national television commercial in which the city is nominated for an NBA franchise. Lynchburg is part of the Tullahoma-Manchester micropolitan area. The downtown area is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Lynchburg Historic District. History White settlers first arrived in the Lynchburg area around 1801. Main Street was originally the main road, and roughly followed the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Ryman Auditorium
Ryman Auditorium (also known as Grand Ole Opry House and Union Gospel Tabernacle) is a 2,362-seat live-performance venue located at 116 Rep. John Lewis Way North, in Nashville, Tennessee. It is best known as the home of the ''Grand Ole Opry'' from 1943 to 1974. It is owned and operated by Ryman Hospitality Properties, Inc. Ryman Auditorium was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 and was later designated as a National Historic Landmark on June 25, 2001, for its pivotal role in the popularization of country music. and   History Union Gospel Tabernacle The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman (1843–1904), a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats. Ryman conceived the idea of the auditorium as a tabernacle for the influential revivalist Samuel Porter Jones. He had attended one of Jones' 1885 tent revivals with the intent to heckle, but was instea ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Henry Ford
Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, business magnate, founder of the Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century. His introduction of the Ford Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As the Ford Motor Company owner, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism", the mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout North America and major citie ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Mellie Dunham
Mellie Dunham (July 29, 1853 - September 27, 1931) was an American fiddler during the early twentieth century. Dunham was born in Norway, Maine, the son of Alanson Mellen Dunham and Christiana Bent. He came to prominence after he was invited to play for Henry Ford at his house in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford sent a Pullman car for Dunham and his wife, Emma "Gram" Dunham (née Richardson), because of Ford's love of country music. While Ford had invited 38 other fiddlers before Dunham, none received as much attention as Dunham did. He was also a snowshoe maker, supplying 60 pairs of snowshoes to Commodore Robert Peary for an Arctic expedition. Dunham died on September 27, 1931, in Lewiston, Maine, after a two-week illness, and was buried in Pine Grove Cemetery, South Paris, Maine South Paris is a census-designated place (CDP) located within the town of Paris in Oxford County, Maine, in the United States. The population was 2,237 at the 2000 census. While the CDP refers only ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and northwest, respectively. The largest state by total area in New England, Maine is the 12th-smallest by area, the 9th-least populous, the 13th-least densely populated, and the most rural of the 50 U.S. states. It is also the northeasternmost among the contiguous United States, the northernmost state east of the Great Lakes, the only state whose name consists of a single syllable, and the only state to border exactly one other U.S. state. Approximately half the area of Maine lies on each side of the 45th parallel north in latitude. The most populous city in Maine is Portland, while its capital is Augusta. Maine has traditionally been known for its jagged, rocky Atlantic Ocean and bayshore coastlines; smoothly contoured mountains; heavily f ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_type2 = Counties , subdivision_name1 = Illinois , subdivision_name2 = Cook and DuPage , established_title = Settled , established_date = , established_title2 = Incorporated (city) , established_date2 = , founder = Jean Baptiste Point du Sable , government_type = Mayor–council , governing_body = Chicago City Council , leader_title = Mayor , leader_name = Lori Lightfoot ( D) , leader_title1 = City Clerk , leader_name1 = Anna Valencia ( D) , unit_pref = Imperial , area_footnotes = , area_tot ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Uncle Dave Macon
David Harrison Macon (October 7, 1870 – March 22, 1952), known professionally as Uncle Dave Macon, was an American old-time banjo player, singer, songwriter, and comedian. Known as "The Dixie Dewdrop", Macon was known for his chin whiskers, plug hat, gold teeth, and gates-ajar collar, he gained regional fame as a vaudeville performer in the early 1920s before becoming the first star of the Grand Ole Opry in the latter half of the decade. Macon's music is considered the ultimate bridge between 19th-century American folk and vaudeville music and the phonograph and radio-based music of the early 20th-century. Music historian Charles Wolfe wrote, "If people call yodelling Jimmie Rodgers 'the father of country music,' then Uncle Dave must certainly be 'the grandfather of country music'." Macon's polished stage presence and lively personality have made him one of the most enduring figures of early country music.Wolfe, pp. 320–321. Early life and family Macon was born in Smart ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]