Martinsville Bulletin, Inc.
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Martinsville, Virginia 24115
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Lewis Compton, known to many as “The Mouth of the South” for his work with radio and racing as well as auctions, is shown recently in his Martinsville home. Bluegrass and country artist Alison Krauss has recorded “Sawin’ on the Strings,” a song Compton wrote more than 50 years ago. |
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
By JEFF WRIGHT - Bulletin Staff Writer
More than 50 years ago, Lewis Compton wrote a song in his head while working second shift in the sand shaker room at DuPont. Since then, that song, “Sawin’ on the Strings,” has been recorded nine times by various artists.
The song tells the story of “Fiddlin’ Will” starting out with “Way back in the mountains, way back in the hills/There used to live a mountaineer, they called him Fiddlin’ Will/Now he could play most anything and some said he could sing/But the one thing that he liked best to do was sawin’ on the strings.”
The most recent artist to record the Martinsville resident’s song is bluegrass and country crossover Alison Krauss. Shortly before Krauss released her latest CD, “Hundred Miles or More: A Collection,” on Tuesday, Compton received a letter from a friend in the music business telling him that his song would be track five on the album.
“Man, ain’t that something,” Compton quipped.
Compton, 78, is no stranger to the music business. On Oct. 31, 1953, he left his job at DuPont and the next day he started working at WPTF, a radio station in Roanoke.
He put his song, “Sawin’ on the Strings,” on the air at noon that day and “within two hours the road was blocked” with people wanting to come to the station after hearing the song, he said.
Two of those people were Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, long regarded by the industry and its fans as pioneers of bluegrass music. Compton taught them to play it and they began performing it everywhere they went, even the Grand Ole Opry, he said.
After Flatt and Scruggs’ performances on the Opry and elsewhere, people began to take notice of the song and others started to play and record it.
It wasn’t until 2001, however, when Ricky Scaggs recorded the song that it really became known to a more mainstream crowd, Compton said. That also was when his work began to pay off financially, he said, adding that he received 8.5 cents of every record Scaggs sold.
In 2004 as part of CMT’s Flameworthy awards show, Krauss and a band comprised of “the best of Nashville” played “Sawin’ on the Strings,” Compton said. After Compton’s oldest son, Richard, saw the show he told his father that Krauss and company did such a good job on the song that maybe they would record it.
“Things move slow in (the music business),” Compton said, so when Jon Burr, head of licensing for Randall Records in Connecticut, contacted him recently to let him know that the song would be recorded, it came as a bit of a surprise.
Burr told Compton, “You know something, this is going to make you some money,” Compton said. The fact that royalty fees had increased to 9.21 cents as well as the fact that Krauss is a pretty big name meant that he would benefit fairly substantially from record sales, Compton said.
The first shipment of the CDs would be of about 500,000 units, Compton was told, but Burr said that it was not a reach to expect the song to sell a million copies.
For Compton, who relies on social security for his income and spends more than $300 a month on various medications, the extra money will be a big help, he said.
Compton has had diabetes for 32 years and Peripheral Neuropathy, a nerve disease that disrupts the body’s ability to communicate with its muscles, organs and tissues, according to The Neuropathy Association’s Web site. He is limited to what he can do now, but said he has experienced things in his life that many people can only dream of.
Since 1962 he has been known as “The Mouth of the South,” a moniker bestowed upon him by Elmo Langley, one of NASCAR’s early drivers, car owners and longtime pacecar driver.
Comtpon announced every race at Martinsville Speedway from 1955 until 1999, worked in radio for 52 years and was a licensed auctioneer for 36 years. |
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