Table of Content
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.
In 1929, Walker created a variety show known as the Farm and Home Hour to help promote his cash stores. The show initially aired as a radio program on WROL-AM and later on WIVK-AM. In 1953, the show adopted a television format for WROL-TV (now WATE-TV) and aired on various local channels until 1983. The show featured artists such as Roy Acuff, Jimmy Martin, Bill Monroe, Carl Smith, Carl Butler, Jim Nabors, and Chet Atkins. The show also helped launch the careers of Dolly Parton, who first performed on the program in 1956 at the age of 10, and the Everly Brothers, who were regulars on the show in the mid-1950s.
Where is dolly parton?
Replica Larry Csonka #9 Miami Dolphins jersey, signed in black felt tip on the back inside of his number. B/w 11x13¾ photo of New York City's legendary concert hall Fillmore East, signed by a Who's Who of 1960s and 1970s rock. 40, no. 12 , p. 38 ("A Look At the World's Week") and credited to Tom Greene, Jr. It’s often said that any East Tennessean born before 1985 has a couple of good Cas Walker stories. According to Kalra Ajay’s The Encyclopedia of Appalachia, Walker had 27 stores by the mid-50s, generating a gross annual revenue of $60 million.
The gigantic convention center that sits in front of the Sunsphere was just a gleam in Victor Ashe’s eye by the time Cas died, but it’s not hard to imagine what he would have had to say about that money pit if he’d been around when it was built. And Shirley Butcher had turned their once-stately mansion on Black Oak Ridge into a white-trash fantasy, but they couldn’t compare to Bobby, who collected heavy equipment and old police cruisers and liked to park junked cars on the tennis court. There came a time when Bobby decided to move the Gradall out to Andrew Johnson Highway, and unaware that his mechanic had disconnected the air brakes, he got a guy called Long John to drive it. On the afternoon of September 30, 1998, give or take a day, I was sitting in the back seat of Johnny Strange’s Cadillac in the parking lot of Mynatt Funeral Home. Bobby Toole was riding shotgun and we were five or six cars back from the hearse that would carry Cas Walker’s body across town to South Knoxville to be buried in Woodlawn Cemetery next to his wife, Virginia. Shop for authentic autographs, rare historical documents, autographed sports collectibles and signed celebrity memorabilia from the world's largest dealer.
Top cast
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.
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.
The man who discovered Dolly Parton: The bizarre story of Cas Walker
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.
Walker was a born showman – a politician with a head for business like few others. Wild, cantankerous and free, Walker was always on the grind – and often on the grift. If it wasn’t for a little girl he helped discover – with wild musical talent and business sense every bit as good as his – he would have been the most successful Sevier County native ever. A few miles south, we rolled into the Western Avenue intersection at the L&N Station where Broadway becomes Henley. The old City Hall on the left is where Cas made Knoxville a laughing stock in the ’50s by getting into a fistfight with fellow council member J.S. A Journal photographer got a good shot of the action, and the picture ended up in Life Magazine.
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.
That was where Cas caught my brother, John “LeRoy Mercer” Bean, scooping up an armload of Watchdogs to give to his friends to study. He was elected mayor in 1946, but after a few weeks of tumultuous meetings and the firing of its own city manager, the city council managed to oust Walker in a recall election. Walker was reelected to the city council the following and remained until voluntarily retiring in 1971. He continued to be a force in Knoxville politics into the 1980s. Walker's stores had a simple rural atmosphere that was popular with the city's working class whites and African-Americans.
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.
Cas campaigned furiously for Johnny’s release, said the rape charge was the biggest lie ever told in Tennessee and wrote stories in his Watchdog tabloid exposing the fact that the woman was wearing hot pants. Bobby “Coal Daddy” Toole was one of the original keepers of the flame, a job he took on while Cas was still alive. Back when I worked for the Knoxville Journal, I’d been instructed to be on the lookout for this quintessential Friend of Cas, because he was always up to no good.
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.
He used his radio show and other innovative methods— such as scattering coupons from airplanes— to advertise his store's weekly specials. By the mid-1950s, Walker's chain had grown to include 27 stores that generated a gross annual revenue of $60 million. Dolly has many homes, in Nashville, LA, and she bought the land she grew up on & built a home there as well.
