The Tonearm"From the 1930s through the 1950s, Arthur Q. Smith roamed the country music and radio worlds, drinking, writing, and selling hundreds of songs on envelopes, napkins, and paper scraps, often for the price of a bottle or his bar tab. Some became top Billboard hits …"
The Secret Songwriter:
https://www.spinmagazine.com/2026/06/arthur-q-smith/?ref=thetonearm.com
THE SECRET SONGWRITER - SPIN
A once-mythical Tennessean has now been confirmed to have written many of early country’s biggest hits and evergreens, songs credited to other Arthur Q. Smith wrote possibly thousands of Country songs without getting credit for almost any of them. He died penniless and unknown He was the Johnny Appleseed of Country music