The King of Country Music’s first great triumph, a quasi-devotional single that singlehandedly ushered country music out of the moribund string band and hoedown era into a new singer based format, the formidable success of ‘The great speckled bird’ and Acuff himself, as a singer, fiddler, promotor, music publisher has all but obliterated traces of a dark and troubling story at the heart of the song. A story which his former cohort, Hawaiian guitarist Clell Summery, who played a crucial role in its story, only now feels at liberty to share. ‘The payments from the estated stopped coming in,’ he explains, ‘so I’m putting the record straight.’
Hank Williams V (no actual relation), chairman of the Grand Ole Opry, admits the revelations hurt the carefully maintained reputation of the Nashville institution. ‘It’s like my [not actual] forefather Hank Williams said about my good friend [actually dead before Williams V was out of kindergarten] Roy: ‘He’s the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn’t worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.’ Of course he never saw Garth, but still… So to hear this twisted tale. Well, the Grand Ole Opry would prefer you didn’t.’
But Summery won’t be silenced. ‘First off, people think Claxton [Roy’s middle name] was this country farmboy rube, a pure soul untainted. Hell, his family was Tennessee state senators and Baptist preachers. He was schooled. He was an intellectual. Always his nose in the books. Crowley, Blavatsky. Satanism was in his blood. He wore a cape wherever he went.’ Career prospects however weren’t so good. An early media blitz balancing farm tools on his chin fizzled out when the hype died, but he never had to shave again.
At end’s rope a deal made at the crossroads gave him heretofore unsuspected athletic prowess. Summery: ‘Claxton was not the sportive kind. At all. He was the team mascot. We mocked him, actually. Andicapped Acuff, we called him. So he disappeared for a couple of weeks, after checking out every occult book in the Maynardville library. Lo and behold, he comes back an athlete. You can imagine the stories going ‘round. I axe him what happened. He says it happened at the crossroads, Plainview and Blaine. Traded his soul for upper body strength. And calves too. Boy…’
Demonic intervention or not, Roy was soon playing for the Knoxville Smokies and was tipped for great things. Then, ‘the deal went south’, says Summery, ‘Claxton was cut loose from the spirit. Lost his body strength. They said it was a sunstroke, but come on, did ya ever heard of a baseball player dropping out over a sunstroke? It was his devil deal gone wrong.’ Roy dropped out and went into seclusion at his parents’ house. ‘I just couldn’t stand the sun anymore,’ he said, in later years conceding that he’d had a nervous breakdown in the early ‘30s. ‘Nuff said,’ says Summery, ‘he’d wavered and lost everything. But now he chose the real nightlife – being a musician.’
The Crazy Tennesseans:
Managed by his father, who handled all daytime contacts, Roy became first a competent fiddler, then a remarkable singer. He joined Doc Hauer’s Medicine Show (‘He loved our product,’ says Hauer) and started playing with guitarist Jess Easterday (‘obviously a stagename,’ says Summery) and childhood friend turned Hawaiian guitarist Summery in the Tennesse Crackerjacks, then the Crazy Tennesseans. ‘We really were crazy.’ They started building a repertoire and a reputation. It was a chance encounter with a six-year-old Anton LaVey in early 1936 however that led the way to ‘The great speckled bird’, eventually his breakthrough single for ACR. ‘Anton, even at 6, had the gift of persuasion,’ continues Summery. ‘He took us under his wing. We started wearing capes again. And under his tutelage we found the philosophy underpinning our work for the Crazy Tennesseans. We started writing a country opera, a cross between the book of Job, Faust and Pygmalion, but with more Satanism.’
‘‘Speckled bird’ was supposed to be the opening song. The main character was this country rube, indoctrinated by the Jesus cult, singing God’s praises. But that was just the start of it. In this guy’s life God and Lord Satan would stage a battle for supremacy, God raining down deprivation and torment upon the man, Lord Satan sending him sweet temptations. At first the guy won’t waver, he remains loyal to his God, but why? Eventually he confronts God and learns of the cheap bet the Lords of Good and Evil have made of his life. This is how God betrays his people. And he sees the honesty and glory of Lord Satan’s path. He spits on a preacher, an autobiographic scene for Roy, surrenders his soul willingly and becomes a preacher in the Church of Satan.’
‘A new life opens for this guy: narcotics, luscious group sex and success at the stock market beyond his wildest dreams. This all takes place during the Depression, while his pious, dull wife starves herself and 9 children for fear of eating Satan’s bread. He laughs at her funeral. Meanwhile he makes enough money to fulfill his lifelong dream of going to Lourdes and piss on Mother Mary’s ghostly apparition, causing an electric short circuit which kills him. His soul descends into hellfire, singing ‘Nearer my God to thee’
More Satanic country music:
Needless to say, the success of its leading song derailed Acuff. Once again his resolution wavered. ‘Success went to his head,’ says Summery, ‘All of a sudden the sex songs had to be released under an alias [the Bang boys] and were buried on the market. Claxton was doing a column for Church Weekly. He abandoned the cape and started going out in the daytime again. It was clear to me our work would never be made.’ An impartial onlooker might conclude he went over to the good side. Whatever the truth of it, the Crazy Tennesseans soon fell apart. Summery was shoved to the side, replaced by a dobro player. ‘A fucking dobro’.
Clell Summery in his later career:
What to make of all this. Summery's later comedy career ('They sold it as comedy, but I meant every word.') casts some doubts on the veracity of his claims but who's to say? Summey still wears a cape. Acuff died in 1992 and hasn’t replied to our requests for comment. ‘The great speckled bird’ – still a remarkable single, whatever its back story. But Summery’s voodoo Hawaiian guitar sure casts a sinister glow on this seemingly idealistic slice of praising the Lord.
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