Name: Cas Walker: Stories on His Life and Legend, Paperback/Joshua S. Hodge
Brand: Univ Tennessee Press
Price: 134.99 RON
Availability: InStock

Descriere & specificații

Businessman, politician, broadcasting personality, and newspaper publisher, Cas Walker (1902-1998) was, by his own estimation, a "living legend" in Knoxville for much of the twentieth century. Renowned for his gravelly voice and country-boy persona, he rose from blue-collar beginnings to make a fortune as a grocer whose chain of supermarkets extended from East Tennessee into Virginia and Kentucky. To promote his stores, he hosted a local variety show, first on radio and then TV, that advanced the careers of many famed country music artists from a young Dolly Parton to Roy Acuff, Chet Atkins, and Bill Monroe. As a member of the Knoxville city council, he championed the "little man" while ceaselessly irritating the people he called the "silk-stocking crowd." This wonderfully entertaining book brings together selections from interviews with a score of Knoxvillians, various newspaper accounts, Walker's own autobiography, and other sources to present a colorful mosaic of Walker's life. The stories range from his flamboyant advertising schemes--as when he buried a man alive outside one of his stores--to memories of his inimitable managerial style--as when he infamously canned the Everly Brothers because he didn't like it when they began performing rock 'n' roll. Further recollections call to mind Walker's peculiar brand of bare-knuckle politics, his generosity to people in need, his stance on civil rights, and his lifelong love of coon hunting (and coon dogs). The book also traces