1928–2018
Buddy Knight

Introduction

Born: Jan­ua­ry 18, 1928, Roanoke, Alabama.

Died: May 14, 2018, Bill Ni­chols State Vet­er­ans Home, Al­ex­an­der Ci­ty, Ala­ba­ma.

Buried: Co­rinth Con­gre­ga­tion­al Chris­tian Church, Wad­ley, Ala­ba­ma.

portrait

Biography

Buddy was one of 11 child­ren of Har­lin Dow­ell Knight and Eva Ber­nice Hest­er.

When he was 4–5 years old, his fa­mi­ly moved to Wad­ley. His par­ents farmed most of their lives, and worked some of the time in tex­tile mills. Buddy grew up on the farm, which raised cot­ton and corn.

His fa­mi­ly loved music, and did a lot of sing­ing. Neigh­bors would come in the ev­en­ing to list­en to his father play the gui­tar and ban­jo, and his mo­ther would some­times join in, sing­ing har­mo­ny.

Buddy at­tend­ed all-day sing­ings in the lo­cal area. Dur­ing the sum­mer months, he studied at sing­ing schools, where he learned to sight read mu­sic. One of his sing­ing school teach­ers was Tom Welch.

After high school, Buddy at­tend­ed the Stamps-Bax­ter three week Normal School. He then went to West Vir­gin­ia to an­oth­er nor­mal school, stu­dy­ing har­mo­ny and song writ­ing with Ver­nie Fos­sett. Later, he stu­died har­mo­ny and com­po­si­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chi­ca­go.

He took a break from mu­sic dur­ing World War II, when he served in the ar­my.

He wrote his first song, For Christ My King, in 1950, and the Stamps-Bax­ter Mu­sic Com­pa­ny pub­lished it in their book Bet­ter Songs.

In the ear­ly 1950s, Bud­dy was lead sing­er for the Sil­ver Tone Quar­tet, which had a dai­ly ra­dio pro­gram on sta­tion WRLD in La­nett, Ala­ba­ma, and near­by West Point, Georg­ia.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, he played pi­ano for the Rhy­thm­aires Quar­tet.

He ev­en­tu­al­ly be­came a song­writ­er for Stamps-Bax­ter. Dur­ing his 50-year ca­reer, he wrote hund­reds of songs.

He be­longed to the Co­rinth Con­gre­ga­tion­al Chris­tian Church in Wad­ley.

In his spare time, he en­joyed trac­ing his fa­mi­ly his­to­ry and ge­nea­lo­gy.

Works

Sources

Music