Lewis County Herald - Serving Hohenwald, Lewis County Tennessee Since 1898

Each week, as part of their 100 Year Anniversary Celebration leading up to the 100th County Fair, The South Central Area Fair has been highlighting other people, places and things that are also at least a century old.

This week, the organization visited Perry County's own.

The first African American owned farm in Perry County, TN was purchased by the Craig family in 1871. Newt Craig was a fiddler who played mountain square dance music. His wife, Conna, was a piano player. They were a traditional country music household.

Their son, McDonald Craig, was born in 1931, and while his parents and siblings performed throughout Perry and Harvard counties during the 1940s and early 1950s, McDonald and his older brother Newt Jr. played the least while growing up. Being the eldest, they worked hard labor in saw mills to help the family meet its financial obligations.

At the age of 20, McDonald left Linden to join the U.S. Army and was assigned to a Gunnery Unit in Korea where he earned the Bronze Star. When he returned from Korea, he stayed with his parents and continued to work the farm. Returning to his music, sometime in the early 1970s, he landed a spot on Nashville's Gold Standard records. Four of his singles were I Want to Tell You, Buckeye Ohio, You and My Guitar, & I'll Never Go to Sleep Alone.

In 1978, at 47 years old, McDonald went to Meridian, Mississippi for the Annual Jimmie Rodgers Yodeling Championship. His son Reginald recalls his dad's telling of the story, "He didn't even take his guitar, because he just wanted to watch. However, once there, he asked to borrow someone's guitar and wound up beating out 72 contestants for First Place, making him the first and only African-American Yodeler to ever win that honor. Marty Stuart won the next year's competition."

According to his wife, Rosetta Craig, the Musuem curators did not want to award him, but the Judges, music business officials whom they had commissioned from California, insisted. "Chuck Martin," said Reginald, recalling his mothers' telling, "was a big, big man, and he insisted, almost to the point of violence, that my dad receive his award as earned.

The Museum reluctantly awarded him First Place but denied McDonald the full honors [a photo and plaque placed in the Museum] that were normally bestowed on prior winners. Undaunted by the incident, McDonald humbly accepted his win and moved on. A year later, Craig was offered to record with RCA Records, which he declined.

The South Central Area Fair presents

In 2002, with the talents of his producer Zeke Clements (original voice of one of the seven dwarfs), the "McDonald Craig Sings Traditional Country Music" CD was released with 26 songs. In 2005, the State of Tennessee's Century Farms Program certified the 73-year old McDonald Craig's 110-acre farm as an Official Century Farm for having been in the same family for more than 100 years. It was purchased for $400 with a yoke of oxen as a down payment by his ex-slave great-grandparents, Tapp and Amy Craig on Christmas Day in 1871. They paid off the debt in two years. The Craig Farm is also on the National Registry. Craig is a longstanding member of the National Traditional Country Music Association as well as an Old Time Country Music Hall of Fame inductee. Though he passed in 2021 his family is continuing the Craig legacy on their family farm today.