Hank Williams once said that when it came to pulling power for the famously devout music fans of the Deep South: “It was Roy Acuff – then God.”

Roy Acuff is the standard by which all other country singers of the 20th century should be judged – well, all except Jimmie Rodgers, who was country’s first solo star in the 1920s.

And with a career spanning 60 years in all aspects of the music biz (performer, publisher, promoter), Acuff is inarguably the music’s most important figure.

Pretty much every country singer from Hank Williams to Luke Combs half a century later owes a debt to Acuff, whose vocal style was effectively the template for the spare, simple sort of music that defined country before it became submerged in schmaltz and bastardised by Nashville.

Not that he began like that. During Roy’s early years, says Wiki (and I’m not entirely sure someone hasn’t hacked in for a laugh), the Acuff house was a popular place for local gatherings: “At such gatherings, Roy would often amuse people by balancing farm tools on his chin.”

I don’t know about that but I do know that Roy, who grew up in a small town in Tennessee and whose father was a fiddle-playing preacher with Scottish roots, had first hoped to become a baseball star. His ambitions were dashed on the eve of a trial with a major league team when he suffered severe sunstroke on a fishing trip, followed by a nervous breakdown.

During his convalescence he decided to become an entertainer instead, taking up the fiddle. He learned how to perform in a local medicine show, making a name for himself with a rendition of an old gospel tune, The Great Speckled Bird, that earned him a recording session in Chicago.

His career began to take off in 1938 when Acuff (by then in his mid-30s) and his group The Smoky Mountain Boys, were hired full time at the Opry.

He became a national superstar during the 1940s but, being a smart cookie, he published his own songbook and, after it sold a staggering 100,000 copies, he realised there was a potential goldmine in music publishing.

Teaming up with Chicago songwriter Fred Rose, he formed the publishing house Acuff-Rose, which went on to own the repertoire of all the big stars of the era, including Hank Williams, Roy Orbison and The Everly Brothers.

He carried on performing, too, and was still active in the Opry when he died in 1992, having shaped the role of country music in the 20th century. And here’s some rare footage of him doing a song first made famous by The Carter Family, and popularised by Johnny Cash.