It was 1954. My brothers and I were sitting on the front porch of our home with our Dad, Jesse Perry, when a 1950 Dodge pickup came into the yard. It was Lath Wyrick.
He got out and walked up to the porch. Daddy said, “Get a chair and set a spell, Lath.”
“I believe I will, Jess,” Lath said.
They had known each other most of their lives. They set around and talked about the weather, President Eisenhower and what a job he was doing and about making moonshine.
Finally Lath said, “Jess, I have come here to talk to you about putting a television in your house.”
Daddy replied, “Lath, I can’t afford a television much less the power it would take to operate it. It would probably cost $2.50 a month just for power.”
Lath replied, “Jess, I’ve got a 21-inch television and an antennae in the back of the truck and the cable to connect them together. I’d like to set the television in your house and install the tower and antennae.
“I‘ll leave it for six weeks and let you try it out and if you decide you do not want it then I will pick it up with no charges to you and no hard feelings. We’ve known each other for a long time.”
This proposal by Lath on a TV really pleased us boys as our aunt and uncle who lived on the farm next door had a TV for about six months. We would go out on some Friday nights and watch it for a couple of hours.
William Lathan Wyrick was born March 31, 1911, and lived until May 10, 1983. His lifelong wife was Esther Keck Wyrick, born August 28, 1914, who lived to be one hundred and two years old, and died July 19, 2016. They were married August 15, 1935. They had two sons, Robert “Bob” Wyrick born August 17, 1936 and Howard Wyrick born March 27, 1946.
Lath worked as an electrician, wiring homes and businesses as electricity spread through the valleys first and eventually into the hills during the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. The expansion of electricity into upper East Tennessee was brought about by the construction of TVA dams on the rivers and tributaries which formed impoundments to produce electricity.
Sometime during his early life working as an electrician, Lath formed an interest in radios and learned how to repair them. He set up radio sales and repair shops in the homes where he lived in Union County, Tennessee.
At one time he had a radio sales and repair shop next to Lee Cooke’s funeral home in Maynardville. The last and longest location was on Hickory Valley and Ridge Roads.
About 1946, Lath acquired a Wilcox Gay Recorder with an attached microphone. It recorded on site on an aluminum disk base with a vinyl coating that was cut by the needle on the recorder’s arm. It could record on three different speeds: 33, 45 and 78.
He also acquired a P.A. system used at church revivals, funerals and weddings. Lath and his oldest son, Robert, toured Union and Claiborne Counties recording church services, funerals and weddings. Lath would not charge for recording church services, but would accept a love offering.
Robert and his brother Howard loved going to Leatherwood Church for recording because they were fed so good and the girls were so pretty. Howard said he ate his first flavored ice at Leatherwood Church and never forgot how great it tasted.
During the forties and the early fifties, Lath Wyrick and his two sons, Robert and Howard, traveled thousands of miles over Union and Claiborne Counties, first in a 1941 Ford, then a 1948 Buick and then a 1950 Dodge pickup, recording mostly in people’s homes and churches.
They recorded gospel, mountain music, country music, bluegrass, as well as poems and sermons. They recorded people who became legends both local and worldwide, including Ivan Cooke, a deputy sheriff in Union County at the time. He was later killed while raiding a local beer joint.
They also recorded Willie and Ray Brewster of the Cas Walker Show and The Brewer Quartet featuring Neal Walker, who later joined the Betterway Quartet and toured the United States and Canada for years.
In 1949, Lath Wyrick, with his son Robert holding the microphone, recorded six songs for Carl Smith at Lath’s radio sales and repair shop located near Cooke’s Funeral Home in Maynardville. Carl Smith’s father, Doc Smith, owned a nearby farm. Copies of these six songs were forwarded to Nashville, which prompted a call back to Carl to come to Nashville. This led to the great music career of Carl Smith and his becoming the number two country music singer behind his friend, Hank Williams. Carl’s career lasted for over 25 years.
Lath and Robert recorded in private homes such as Clint Johnson’s home in Sharps Chapel. Clint was a great fiddler in his own right. Clint Johnson told me he moved to Nashville and worked as an A&P aircraft mechanic and helped maintain Mel Tillis’ Beechcraft King Air plane.
After these aluminum recording disks were discovered in a barn by Robert Wyrick, with the aid of Bobby Fulcher they were sent to MTSU. There they were converted to CD form to preserve for future generations. We don’t know how many recordings Lath, Robert and Howard made, but there are upwards of five hundred recordings preserved today on CDs at the Roy Acuff/Union County Genealogical Museum and Library.
At the time of these recordings, AM radio was the main entertainment in southern homes. This all changed around 1950 as television started appearing in Atlanta, Nashville, Chattanooga, Charlotte and the Tri Cities in upper East Tennessee.
Lath Wyrick, being a visionary, learned how to repair and became a dealer for RCA and Emerson television sets. He had sold 13 television sets before the first television station WROL Channel Six went on the air in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1953.
Up until this point in time in East Tennessee, music and entertainment had been limited to the Cas Walker Show and the Midday Merry Go Round. Their formats included gospel, mountain music, country and bluegrass. Most of the entertainers were amateurs learning their trade on stage and on the radio. Many later became great country artists after moving to Nashville. These televisions installed in the homes in rural Tennessee opened up new vistas to people who had never been exposed to shows like The Perry Como Show, The Red Skelton Show, The Grand Old Opry and the greatest of all, The Ed Sullivan Show, that introduced some of the greatest singers, groups and acts into their homes.
Lath Wyrick played the biggest part in Union and Claiborne Counties with his creative business and work ethic by working with the people in these two counties at a time when they were very rural and poor.
Six weeks later at Jesse Perry’s farm on Big Ridge bordering Norris Lake, a 1950 Dodge pickup comes up the road and parks in the yard at his home. We are all setting on the porch after a hard day’s work on the farm. Lath Wyrick gets out.
Daddy said, “Come on in Lath and get a chair.”
Lath said, “Are you gettin’ any work out of these boys? I believe they could work another two hours.”
The anticipation from us boys was so thick in the air you could feel it not knowing whether Dad was going to buy the television or not. Lath had a 99% probability that Daddy was going to buy the television as our Mother had been watching those gooey soap operas with that awful organ music and we boys had been watching the Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and Daddy had been watching the six p.m. news and wrestling and boxing for six weeks.
When Daddy asked Lath, “How much are those payments again?” We knew the TV would stay.
That television opened up a whole new world to the Perry family thanks to Lath Wyrick.
In 1960, the Perry boys along with other boys in the neighborhood including Howard Wyrick, would gather on Saturday nights at Lath Wyrick’s television and radio shop and play records from artists we had seen on television and heard on radio and have great fellowship. After 60 years I still relish those memories.