In 1967 Felice and Boudleaux Bryant wrote—in only 10 minutes—“Rocky Top,” which upon its first playing at halftime of the Alabama game in 1972 became the UT rallying song for sports and other occasions. UT has a special license to play the song.
The Bryants met at the Schroeder Hotel in Milwaukee in 1945 where Felice (named Matilda Genevieve Scaduto) was an elevator operator and where Diadorius Boudleaux Bryant, a classically trained violinist from Georgia who had spent a season with the Atlanta Philharmonic in 1938, was playing in a jazz band in the cocktail lounge. After five days, the couple ran off together and later married. Boudleaux and his wife, for whom his pet name was Felice, became one of the most successful song writing teams ever. In the early years of their marriage, they moved around—from Cincinnati to Green Bay and then back to his native Moultrie, Georgia. Their first published song was “Genevieve.”
In 1948 a Grand Ole Opry newcomer, Little Jimmy Dickens, recorded their song “Country Boy,” which went to number one on the charts in 1949. In 1950 the Bryants moved to Nashville. In 1958 the Everly Brothers (from Knoxville) recorded the first of several Bryant songs: “Bye Bye Love,” which would define the Everly Brothers’ career. Later, the Everly Brothers recorded “All I have to Do is Dream” and “Wake Up Little Susie,” among other Bryant compositions.
Others who recorded the Bryants’ songs included Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, the Beach Boys, Tony Bennett, Simon and Garfunkel, Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, and Sarah Vaughan.
Among other honors, the Bryants have been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame (1991), the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, the National Songwriters’ Hall of Fame (1986), and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1982 “Rocky Top” became a Tennessee State Song.
In 2017, there was a special “Rocky Top” exhibit that opened in Hodges Library, accompanied by a performance from the Pride of the Southland Band. Included in the exhibit was the original handwritten ‘Rocky Top’ manuscript, written by the Bryants in 1967, in room 388 of the Gatlinburg Inn in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Sons of the Bryants Del and Dane loaned both the manuscript and the guitar their father used when composing Rocky Top, as well as other ‘Rocky Top’ related memorabilia for the exhibit.