He gave them their $12 tuition, and sent them on their way. They never made it, though. They stopped by a country store, used some of the money to buy candy and cigarettes, and laid out in the woods until school was over. As a result, Charlie and Ira never learned to sing from those shape-note gospel books, but they learned something of the wrath of their father. Charlie recalls: “He whipped us for not going; he whipped us for lying; he whipped us for spending money; he cleaned our plow good.” Nevertheless, the Colonel was proud of the way his two boys could harmonize together, and had them sing for neighbors and at church.
By now they were listening to the Delmore Brothers, who had grown up a couple of counties away from Henagar, as they sang every Saturday on the Grand Ole Opry. As a child, Ira had crafted a homemade mandolin out of a syrup bucket and corn stalks, and a little later traded his bicycle for an old beat-up guitar. Eventually he got a mandolin, and learned to play it by listening to old Monroe Brothers records. On July 4, 1940, the brothers were paid for performing for the first time, at a hamlet called Flat Rock. About the same time they saw their first touring show—a visit by Roy Acuff and his troupe at a local schoolhouse.
Charlie remembers standing in the field hoeing crops and seeing a huge old aircooled Franklin drive up the road with the legend “Roy Acuff and the Smoky Mountain Boys” on the side. “We knew at that point, when we saw Acuff pass in his car that day, that’s what we wanted to do. It was just a matter of how to do it.” It was a struggle. Ira got married while still a teenager, and had to take a job at a mill in nearby Chattanooga to support his family. Still, the boys persisted, and eventually won the chance to do their own radio show over WDEF in Chattanooga in 1942, where they appeared as the Radio Twins and featured songs like “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.”
