"George...I am forwarding Jack Neely's take on the Sam McGee 1926 broadcast. I believe he has got a handle on it. Please thank Chip for me and thank you for the great site. I can listen to some of the sampling of past DJ's and hear that old AM sound and I am 16 with the window down sliding up North Broadway to Shoney's." (Terry Ruth~Kansas City MO)
From: Jack Neely
To: Terry Ruth
Re: Knoxville Mystery Hotel and Knoxville Blues
That’s an interesting and complicated mystery. I looked into it a long time ago, and I’ll see if I can remember:
There’s a ref to the Windsor Hotel—that’s what I hear, anyway--allegedly in Knoxville, but also a reference to having recently been on a subway. Which puzzled me. As you may know, subways are rare in Knoxville.
I did some research, a few years ago, and found out the recording was actually made in New York, as many early country recordings were, several years before Nashville’s ascendance as a recording capital.
This is not the only recording of musicians ad-libbing about being in Knoxville when they were actually recording elsewhere. It may be a nod to Knoxville’s reputation for that kind of music, or to Sterchi Brothers Furniture of Knoxville; they were a major sponsor of early country recordings actually cut in New York.
The first time I heard it, it was on an old-time radio show, and was presented as Uncle Dave Macon, with Sam McGee—they were recording together at the time--and I assumed it was Uncle Dave doing the talking.
I tried to look into the reference via the local archives, and found there was no Windsor Hotel in Knoxville in 1926. So for a while I assumed it was just made up, obligatory banter, introductory nonsense, maybe even the name of the hotel in New York where they were staying. But later I learned there had been a Windsor Hotel in Knoxville, back in the 1890s, and it was on Wall Ave., right near Market Square, which was kind of a cauldron of early folk music, fiddling contests, street musicians, etc. Sam McGee probably wouldn’t have been old enough to remember the Windsor, but Uncle Dave would have. I have wondered if it was an homage to a fond memory.
But then again, I can’t prove Uncle Dave was in the room. But he was certainly more talkative and full of himself than the McGees, who probably would have been content to record straight up, as an instrumental.
To complicate matters further, Uncle Dave did make some recordings at the St. James Hotel in 1930 (now lost, I think); it was on the same block as the old Windsor, hardly a fruit-jar’s throw away.
Jack Neely Associate Editor,
Metro Pulse, Knoxville
