As a young woman, Donna Guffey lorded over the registers as head cashier of Cas Walker's Morganton Road store.
She distinctly remembers the diminutive East Tennessee icon as he made his regular rounds, always taking time for a kind word with her and her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Parker Whiting.
"He always called mama 'Mrs. White,' because our dad's stage name was Smoky White," Guffey recalled in a recent conversation with The Daily Times. "He was coming in and out all of the time -- he was well-known for popping in and out at the strangest times. If something popped in his head, he said it. He was never insulting, and he had a very dry sense of humor, but he generally meant what he said."
Guffey is one of many East Tennesseans with fond (and not-so-fond) memories of Cas Walker, the East Tennessee grocer, politician and long-time country music promoter who enjoyed local longevity on radio and television. Although Walker died almost 10 years ago, his legacy still lives on, and Saturday night, Guffey's Western swing group -- Sisters of the Silver Sage, in which she's joined by siblings Janet Giles and Rhonda Whiting -- will take part in a Cas Walker tribute show at The Palace Theater in downtown Maryville.
"An Evening with Cas Walker and Friends," a benefit for the Tennessee Archive of Moving Image and Sound, will feature performances by acts influenced or supported by Walker, as well as clips from the "Cas Walker Farm and Home" TV program and previously lost TV advertisements from the 1950s that featured well-known local entertainers. The Sisters trace their link to Walker back through their father, a long-time fiddle player for Grand Ole Opry star and "Hee Haw" star Archie Campbell.
"Cas would call up daddy if he had a spot available on his show and daddy wasn't working with Archie," Guffey said. "He was gone with Archie a lot, but he played for Cas, too."
"I remember watching his early morning TV show when it came on at 6 a.m.," Whiting added. "As a little girl, it was always a chance to see daddy on TV. I remember Cas had a very colorful personality."
Although Smoky White died in 1993, his daughters (he had six of them) turned their love of singing into a career over time. Sisters of the Silver Sage began performing in public in 1999, first up at Deadbeat Pete's in Townsend. Despite their father's familiarity with the stage, it was a rocky start for the Sisters, Guffey remembered.
"I was literally scared to death," she said with a laugh. "I would write down word-for-word -- even the 'ands' and the 'thes' -- what I was going to say between songs. And then one night, I forgot my notes. I was totally terrified and silent for a minute or two, but then I started talking, and everybody started grinning, and I haven't shut up since."
Performing runs in the Whiting sisters' blood, it seems -- little else accounts for the 10-year run of successful shows, both locally and nationally. The group is routinely nominated for Academy of Western Artists awards, has won several over the years and is a favorite of Blount County residents. They pick and poke at one another on stage, laugh and cut up with the audience and -- when they make music -- sound like angels that ride the open plains on chariots made of tumbleweeds, mesquite wood and trail dust.
They draw on the experiences of their father and his colleagues, men who helped put East Tennessee on the map as the birthplace of country music during the heyday of such programs as Walker's show and the WNOX radio show "Mid-Day Merry Go Round."
"There's a great deal of information, an incredible well of tales and stories, that you can pull from," Guffey said. "It's a mix of smiles and enjoyment, and if you can duplicate that in your own performance, people connect with you."
The band has also been the bedrock upon which the sisters have leaned -- tragedy has visited the ladies frequently in recent years, and in an 18-month period, they lost five family members, including their youngest sister.
"It's been such a big, huge part of me and such a comfort -- like falling back on a big, huge, soft pillow," Guffey said.
Currently, the ladies are working on a new album -- constant delays have dragged out work on it, but there's already a title -- "There'll Be Harmony in Heaven" -- and a distinctive, bluegrass-gospel feel that will mark it as different from their previous records. With three more songs needed to complete it, Guffey vowed to have it in the hands of fans by the end of summer.
In the meantime, they'll take part in Saturday's quasi-reunion -- guitarist Luke Brandon was a frequent collaborator with their dad, and the girls are honored to be a part of night of East Tennessee magic -- especially since it's another opportunity to perform together again.
"There's a satisfaction in being able to really work artistically with your family -- to build something and create something," Whiting said. "I wrote one song called 'Stampede,' which talks about seeing higher ground to save your life, but it's also about seeking higher ground spiritually -- and that's what I get from working with my family."