The man who discovered Dolly Parton: The bizarre story of Cas Walker
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Visitors just looked for his car (generally a Nash Rambler that he’d take the back seat out of so he could haul his coon dogs around), and went on in and hollered for him. A mile or so down the road we passed the intersection of Edgewood where you turn off to go to the WBIR TV station. We’d just sat through a surprisingly brain-numbing service that wasn’t even livened up by the presence of the Rev. J. Bazzel and Mrs. Mull (at least that’s what I like to say since I recall so little of it). East Tennessee Baby Boomers were raised on thumpin’ good watermelons and bad Cas Walker jokes. We mocked his gravelly voice – “Say, Neighbors” – and we repeated stories about him putting formaldehyde in his hamburger. He was somebody Cas loved like a son and did everything he could to help when Johnny got arrested, tried and convicted of putting a blue light on his car and pulling a woman over and raping her.
But I still remember the cas walker show, doll Parton & the Everly Brothers. It wasn’t far from there to the south end of Woodlawn, and we pulled into the front part of the old cemetery where an open grave next to Virginia’s awaited. Granddaddy Bean and my brother John are buried there, too, up on the hill overlooking the Walker plot. Granddaddy bought his plots from a guy named Roe Ford, who sang in the Dixie Gems quartet with him.
Autographs from people credited in 1954 Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour
Orton Caswell "Cas" Walker (March 23, 1902 – September 25, 1998), was a Tennessee businessman, politician, and personality on television and radio. Walker founded a successful chain of small grocery stores that grew to include several dozen stores scattered throughout the Knoxville, Tennessee vicinity as well as parts of Virginia and Kentucky. From 1941 through 1971, Walker served on the Knoxville city council where he became legendary for his uncompromising political stances and his vehement opposition to what he claimed was a corrupt elitism in the city's government. The Cas Walker Farm and Home Hour, a local variety show sponsored by Walker, ran in various radio and television formats between 1929 and 1983 and helped launch the careers of entertainer Dolly Parton and the Everly Brothers.
Dolly returned to the show in March of 1967, in living color and all grown up, singing the second single from her first album, “Hello, I’m Dolly.” The archive video is also available on Dolly’s website. It’s fitting, in a way, that Orton Caswell “Cas” Walker of Tennessee fit all his living within the confines of the 20th century, because few people encapsulate the width and breadth of the wild advancement of the 1900s better than old Cas. We got on the Henley Bridge and crossed the Tennessee River (Cas would never have called it Ft. Loudoun Lake) into South Knoxville. Over on the right, down on the Vestal side of Chapman Highway, stood the dumpy little building that used to be his corporate headquarters. He had a snarly stuffed raccoon in the reception area along with an equally mean-looking, life-sized painting of himself.
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The Sunsphere loomed on the right a block south, a reminder of how Cas fought the 1982 World’s Fair with all his waning power. And although the fair was pretty much a hell of a party, the collapse of the Butcher banking empire that was its aftermath surpassed even Cas’s dire predictions. But he was out of office by then and people had pretty much quit listening to him, although the Farm & Home Hour did continue until March 30, 1983. Another block south on Broadway is the cutoff to Old Broadway where the Fountain City Cas Walker’s store used to be. My Granddaddy, Ralph Bean, aka the Singing Mailman, used to take me in there when I was little, and I still remember the smell of overripe bananas and decaying meat, a world removed from the cinnamon bun and stargazers ambiance of a modern-day Fresh Market.
But being East Tennessee’s Ed Sullivan wasn’t the only motivating factor for Walker. Remember, his show was designed to promote his grocery stores – which eventually became a multi-million dollar empire. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I could make out that patched-up spot in the parking lot where Cas buried Digger O’Dell alive in 1960, or so.
How 10-year-old Dolly made it on television before her family even owned one
It was his habit to call everybody – even other men – honey, and he’d stuck with Cas through good times and bad. Some Tuesday evenings they’d take him downtown so he could stand up at the city council and denounce Victor Ashe, which always perked Cas up. O’Dell – like David Blaine many years later – made his money being buried alive. Walker paid O’Dell to be buried in the parking lot of his Chapman Highway store. Footage from that day shows O’Dell being dramatically carried in his “coffin” to his grave, which was covered over with asphalt.
Although this is an indivisible part of his legend, Cas told me that the whole thing was “a put-up deal” that he’d faked. A lot of people think the resulting assault charge was enough to leverage him out of running for re-election to the city council, something the silk-stocking crowd had been wishing would happen for decades. The next surviving landmark was Eddie’s Auto Parts on our left, which still sits on the little stub of Walker Boulevard that survived the construction of I-640. Eddie Harvey bought a couple of lots from Cas to build his iconic store. Some years later, Eddie embellished it with a sign from the Italian Pavilion at the World’s Fair.
After success in business and entertainment, Walker ventures into politics
Footage from that day shows hundreds of cars filling the lot and thousands of people vying for a glimpse of the daredevil. It was 1924 and Cas Walker, all of 22, was on his way to riches and fame unimaginable for a boy born in a mountain community at the turn of the century. A born showman, he helped promote that first store tossing live chickens off the roof. My son the lawyer has a photograph of the “Three Best Things in the World – watermelon, possum and Cas Walker” sign hanging in his San Diego home. Call it the mystic chords of memory or shared tribal experience, but no matter how far we travel, we just can’t shake Cas, and we probably can’t even tell you exactly why, any more than we can say why we like our tea sweet and our chicken fried. Cas Walker lives not only in our oral tradition, but in 232,000 Google hits, dozens of You Tube clips and on the Dolly Parton “Heartsongs” album where she sings his Farm and Home Hour theme song just like she used to do when she was on his radio show as a kid.
Walker was born to a working-class family in Sevier County, Tennessee in 1902. He quit school at the age of 14 and spent several years working at different jobs around the region, namely at the Champion Fibre Company in North Carolina and later at various coal mines in Kentucky. In 1924, he returned to East Tennessee where he established the first Cas Walker's Cash Store in Knoxville with money he had saved. Discover the stars who skyrocketed on IMDb’s STARmeter chart this year, and explore more of the Best of 2022; including top trailers, posters, and photos.
As a politician, Walker successfully portrayed himself as a champion of small farmers and the working class. This image was enhanced in 1956 when Life Magazine published a photograph of Walker preparing to punch fellow city councilman J. S. Cooper after the two had engaged in a heated debate over property assessments.
I’m pretty sure I went to see Digger one Sunday when I went home from First Methodist Church with my best friend Sylvia Stout, who lived over in Lindbergh Forest a couple blocks away. Cas figured that was his second-best publicity stunt, surpassed only by giving away copies of Elvis Presley’s will with $10 grocery orders. Cas walker didnt discover dolly, her uncle took her to sing on his show, her uncle discovered her. Cas being Cas, he was reelected to the council where he earned national attention in 1956 when Life Magazine published a photo of Cas preparing to punch fellow city councilman J.S.
In his self-published newsletter, The Watchdog, Walker blasted political opponents and raged against tax increases. He also used The Watchdog to launch controversial attacks against his business competitors. In the 1960s, he unsuccessfully opposed plans to fluoridate Knoxville's water supply and played a pivotal role in derailing attempts to consolidate the governments of Knoxville and Knox County. Walker's political mentor-turned-rival, George Dempster, once said, "If I ordered a whole carload of SOB's and they just sent Cas, I'd sign for the shipment." Orton Caswell "Cas" Walker , was a Tennessee businessman, politician, and personality on television and radio. Toole was a notorious old-timey ward-heeling political boss who had a shock of white hair, shaggy black eyebrows and an unlit stogie that he chewed until cigar juice dribbled down the front of his shirt.
And Shirley Butcher’s mansion, “Butch-Vue,” which he bought at auction after the Butcher banking empire went under. Walker continued distributing The Watchdog until the early 1980s, when a libel suit forced it out of publication. During the same period, Walker's influence helped defeat a second attempt to merge the Knoxville and Knox County governments.
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