Uncle Dave Mason (1870-1952)

Uncle Dave Mason (1870-1952). . One of Tennessee's early country music performers was the irrepressible singer and banjo player, Uncle Dave Macon, the "Dixie Dewdrop.", David Harrison Macon was born in the tiny hamlet of Smartt Station in Warren County, and spent his teenage years in Nashville where his parents operated the old Broadway Hotel. Among the clientele were vaudeville and other traveling performers, both black and white, whose music and songs influenced the young Macon. , After getting married, Macon moved to a farm east of Murfreesboro and hauled freight with mule teams while continuing to learn old folk songs from members of the community. He sang as he drove and picked his banjo under a handy shade tree when he stopped for a rest. After a trucking company forced him out of business, Macon embarked on a career in music soon after his fiftieth birthday., After a couple of years, a talent scout signed Uncle Dave to entertain at vaudeville theaters around the country. Before long, he was sent to New York to record and his fame spread rapidly. In 1925, Macon became one of the first performers on the Grand Ole Opry and, for a while, was its only superstar. By the 1930s he was a regular on the show and played there until a few months before his death. No one aided the transformation of folk music of the nineteenth century into modern country music more than Uncle Dave Macon.