Raised in Osyka, T. Tommy Cutrer became a versatile country and gospel singer, instrumentalist, businessman, and politician, but he was most famous as a radio and television personality from the 1940s through the 1990s. Born in Kentwood, Louisiana, on June 29, 1924, and raised and schooled in Osyka, Thomas Clinton Cutrer was the son of logger Thomas J. Cutrer and his wife Zellie. After osteomyelitis sidelined him from football at age 14 and left him bedridden for a year, he resumed school at St. Mary of the Pines in Chatawa, where an emphasis on elocution helped shape the clear diction that later defined his broadcasting career. By his senior year he was working as emcee of a radio variety show in McComb, and he went on to increasingly prominent disc jockey and emcee positions at KARK in Little Rock in 1943, WREC in Memphis in 1944, WSLI in Jackson in 1946, NUZ in Houston in 1949, and KCIJ in Shreveport from 1951 to 1954. His programs were usually devoted to country music, sometimes to pop, and in Houston he acquired the on-air name T. Tommy when a station manager shortened the pronunciation of his surname. In Shreveport he was the first disc jockey to play Johnny Cash records and the first outside Memphis to play Elvis Presley records. He also advanced a secondary career as a country and gospel singer and drum-playing band leader, with future legendary instrumentalists Floyd Cramer and Jimmy Day among his band members, and he recorded dozens of singles for Abbott, Capitol, Mercury, Columbia, and Dot during the 1950s. After losing his left leg in a car crash on the way to Nashville, his ability to perform music was greatly limited, but Nashville became the site of his greatest success in country music broadcasting. At WSM radio, from 1954 to 1964, he gained national fame as a disc jockey, as the voice of the Grand Ole Opry, and as emcee on the Flatt and Scrugg, Pet Milk Opry, and Johnny Cash television shows, and he was named the nation’s top D.J. in 1957. As emcee of Country Music Worldwide, he was heard across Europe, South America, and Africa. He later turned to politics, making an unsuccessful run for Congress in Tennessee in 1976 and winning election as a state senator there in 1979. After four years in office, he worked as a spokesman for the Teamsters union, operated restaurants, and returned to radio; his nationally syndicated country music interview show, Music City, USA, was heard on more than 130 stations in the 1970s. Elected to the Disc Jockey Hall of Fame in 1980, he was married to Vicky Martin from 1943 until his death on October 11, 1998, and they had three sons and two daughters.
