Roy Acuff & Hank Williams

The Andrew Johnson Hotel's top floor was the original site of WNOX's live country music variety show The Midday Merry-Go-Round, where an early star was a little-known fiddler named Roy Acuff. Complaints about the rowdy fans and musicians who crowded the hotel's elevator and lobby forced WNOX to move its live shows elsewhere. On New Year's Eve, 1952, Hank Williams checked into the hotel for what would be the final hours of his life, and though he was pronounced dead in West Virginia, many believe he had died before his teenaged chauffeur carried him out of the hotel.

Knoxville, Tennessee · United States