Editorial
Front Page - Friday, November 13, 2009
Dismembered Tennesseans to be honored as local History Makers
Samara Litvack
At McCallie School in the late 1940s, a small group of teenage boys developed an interest in what was then referred to as “hillbilly music.” They tuned their radios in every week to catch 15-minute segments of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys at the Grand Ole Opry, and spent each week between shows trying to imitate the songs they heard.
“We would listen very carefully,” says Fletcher Bright, more than 60 years later. “We couldn’t record it, so we would try to copy just from listening. Of course, we had better brains then than we do now.”
But the young men had more than good brains; they had talent. They began developing as musicians and eventually formed Found Sam and his Dismembered Tennesseans, headed by vocalist Sammy Joyce.
“The interesting thing about that was that he couldn’t play a musical instrument,” Bright says, smiling as he thinks back. “And he couldn’t sing. He tried to sing – put it that way – but it was a pretty poor effort.”
The group played together until Bright and band mate Ansley Moses went off to school at Davidson College. There, while Bright earned his degree in business and finance, the two held regular jam sessions. When they returned to Chattanooga, they picked back up with their band, sans Sammy Joyce, becoming simply the Dismembered Tennesseans.
While the faces of the band have changed over the years, its old time sound and upbeat tempo have remained the same. Today, Bright and his fiddle are accompanied onstage by Ed “Doc” Cullis on the five string banjo, Laura Walker on standup bass and vocals, Bob Martin on guitar, Don Cassell on mandolin and occasionally Brian Blaylock on dobro, flat-top guitar and anything else he decides to pick up and play.
“I’m the only one whose job is safe,” he says with a smile. “He doesn’t play the fiddle much.”
As bluegrass music has become more popular over the last few decades, so has the popularity of the Dismembered Tennesseans. Bright has seen peaks of interest in the genre, and has enjoyed the highs and lows of it with his band.
Music has always been part-time for the Dismembered Tennesseans. Bright focused his energy for most of his life on work and raising a family. And along with rejoining his old band after college, Bright went straight into the workforce.
“I graduated one day and went to work the next,” he says. His father, Gardner Bright, owned a successful real estate firm in town. Now the Fletcher Bright Company, the family business was established in 1927 and continues to flourish as one of the most successful firms in town.
But successful businesses take time to build, so music often took a backseat. Bright says it’s a miracle, then, that the Dismembered Tennesseans have developed such a fan base, as they were only able to play when each member’s life allowed.
“We couldn’t ‘hit the road,’ so to speak,” he says. Rather, the band played local gigs and festivals, and slowly but surely made a name for itself. Today, however, things are a bit different.
The Dismembered Tennesseans travel by private jet, flown by Bright himself, to perform at events and festivals all across the country. They’ve played at the Kennedy Center. They’ve played for politicians and dignitaries and have become household names within the Chattanooga community and beyond.
The group has played 13 consecutive years at a bluegrass festival in Pennsylvania, and local events, such as the Boxcar Pinion Music Festival and the Chattanooga Downtown Partnership’s Three Sisters Festival, wouldn’t be complete without multiple Dismembered Tennessean performances.
And while decades of playing of playing bluegrass before bluegrass was cool taught Bright to entertain his audience between songs, the undeniable talent of the band and its collective onstage magic is what has kept and continues to keep them going.
“If you’ve seen our show, we don’t take ourselves too seriously,” Bright says. “We have a good time. But also, I want to play good music and I’ve spent some time trying to play decent fiddle. All the band works at it.”
And if recognition is any indication, the Dismembered Tennesseans have succeeded at doing just that. On Nov. 18, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Bright and the Dismembered Tennesseans will be honored with the Chattanooga History Center’s fourth annual History Makers Award. The group was chosen for this honor based on its contributions to southern regional music, both as cultural preservationists and musical entertainers.
“We are honored and we are flattered,” Bright says, “but all we’ve really done is what we wanted to do. So it’s a little silly to be saying how wonderful we are because if it wasn’t fun, we wouldn’t have done it.”
Despite his modesty, Bright understands that what makes the band so “wonderful” is its infectious energy. While they’re having fun together, everyone around them is having fun, too.
“Two plus two equals five with us,” he says, again grinning. “We have fun.”
And while Bright says the honor presented by the Chattanooga History Center implies that the band is “perhaps history,” he assures they have no intentions of quitting any time soon.
“We’re going to keep going,” Bright says. “We have no plans to retire. The audience can retire us, though, if they don’t ask us to play anymore. So that might be the signal, when they don’t ask.”
Chances are, however, the demand for Dismembered Tennesseans performances won’t diminish in the near future. And with distinguished honors like the History Makers Award, it’s plain to see why.
Tickets for the Chattanooga History Center luncheon are $45 and table sponsorship begins at $500. This event is the center’s major annual fundraiser
and will include a few songs performed live by the Dismembered Tennesseans, with special guest Ansley Moses. For more information, call 423-265-3742, extension 10.
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