Rules of Thumb | Twinkies & Cigarettes for Thumbs Carllile

Surely you've heard that old knee-slapper: “What do you get when you play country music backwards?” Why, you get back your wife, your dog, and your truck! But sometimes, and this is no joke, a legendary country musician's widow reunites him with his Twinkies and cigarettes on his heavenly birthday!

That's right, today I returned to historic Decatur Cemetery (I visited last year as part of a continued exploration of sites constructed of Stone Mountain granite as a means of showing the interconnectedness of our communities), to raise a golden, cream-filled sponge cake to the long late Decaturite, Kenneth Ray “Thumbs” Carllile, on what would've been his 87th birthday. It was an honor to join his widow, Virginia Boyle Carllile, 86, her daughter Kathy, 56, both of Decatur, her granddaughter, Calli McGregor Southern, 41, who grew up in Decatur and now resides in Kennesaw, and Calli's daughter Annabella, 17. Not long after arriving at noon, I spied four generations of Carlille women casually sitting on a grassy slope near the cemetery entrance holding court with the spirit of Thumbs Carllile as if gathered for an afternoon picnic. Instead of potato salad or hotdogs, though, they came bearing two of Thumbs' favorite guilty pleasures that he'd left stashed (against doctor's orders—that outlaw!) in his guitar toolbox that day he suffered a fatal heart attack back in 1987 at a friend's place in Chattanooga, TN, where he was in town holding a seminar. After I recovered from the sweet, funny sight of packages of Twinkies at my feet in a graveyard, I noticed a new #50 marker sticking in the ground beside his plot and was pleased that Thumbs has officially, and so deservedly, been added to the cemetery's recently updated self-guided walking tour brochure since my last visit (available in print only for now at the cemetery's main office, but the older version with 40 listings is still online).

Thumbs Carlille's Twinkie Defense

Famous for his unique method of playing the guitar on his lap with his thumbs, Thumbs was associated with several award-winning bands and musicians during his day, most notably Little Jimmy Dickens and Roger Miller, who would also die at 56 in 1992, a few years after Thumbs. Thumbs indeed left an indelible thumbprint on country music history with his unique, homespun technique of playing guitar with his thumbs from an early age, but let's here acknowledge the no less important rules of thumb underscored by his life: don't separate a man from his Twinkies and Camel filters. And marry a good woman like Virginia Boyle Carllile if you really want that open E chord to ring!

Thumbs Carllile Plays "Candy Girl" on Opry AM (in a Batman shirt)

So they may've discontinued Camel filters these days, but Twinkies are still being made, and, by Jove, we've still got Virginia Boyle Carllile, and this birthday tip of the hat to Thumbs is actually a perfect bookend to a brief social media post I made about Virginia on her birthday just last summer on June 5, 2017. So many people were excited to discover that Virginia is just as much of a sparkling musical star in our earthly constellation, too, and to reminisce about Thumbs—or even to learn of him for the first time—that I decided to rework some of that piece here, so both she and Thumbs can be celebrated together in one place.

Virginia Carllile at Kroger #459 (aka "Big Kroger" and "Kraft Kroger," as a Kraft plant was once located here)

You never really know who anyone is until you talk with them. Ms. Virginia, as she’s affectionately known at the Kroger #459 on N. Decatur Rd., where I often shop, is a quintessential example. To the incurious shopper, she might just be an elderly store associate pushing a small buggy of returns through the store as she warmly greets customers. She’s a diminutive spitfire, with both eyes affected by macular degeneration, and she carries a small magnifier in her work apron even though she's bespectacled. When I first met her on Christmas Eve last year, I felt conflicted that she wasn’t off enjoying her golden years. I experience a similar knee-jerk reflex when I see a very pregnant woman waiting tables or giving a pedicure. There’s no doubt in my mind Ms. Virginia greatly enjoys her 10am-3pm shift at the grocery store, every day except Tuesdays and Thursdays, where she’s widely adored by employees and customers alike, but the reality is that she’s needed to work ever since Thumbs died, as he had the kind of non-existent retirement benefits you might imagine for a session musician of his time (and maybe it’s true enough for plenty of today’s musicians).

Ms. Virginia in Germany 1951

Each subsequent grocery trip, I brought home more more than fresh produce — music history facts and quick snippets about her life. I was in awe that humble Virginia Boyle Carllile from Gillette, Wyoming at the Kroger down the street had once enjoyed quite a well-respected singing career before, and after, marrying Thumbs Carllile, who she originally met in Stuttgart, Germany, around 1951, where both were stationed in the Special Services, an entertainment division of the Armed Forces (Virginia was in the Air Force and Thumbs was a gun repairman in the Army, where Virginia told me he accidentally mashed his thumb with a hammer and was thankfully reassigned). Thumbs appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson a total of five times, and Virginia once performed the song "Indian Girl, Indian Boy” on the show on January 16, 1963, the week Jimmy Dean guest hosted. She was backed by Skitch Henderson and the Tonight Show orchestra — and Thumbs, of course (and backed by none other than Les Paul and Mary Ford [nee Iris Colleen Summers] on the official album). You bet I tried to locate footage of those appearances, but either they really did not start archiving shows until later years or that story about a studio fire destroying them might well be true.

Virginia Boyle Carllile (far R) at a 7th Army Special Services rehearsal for "Xanadu" in Vaihingen, Germany in 1953. The leading man of the production was "Jeopardy's" Johnny Gilbert. William J. Fenza (far L)

It's A Family Tradition For The Carlliles

After work Ms. Virgina walks back to the Decatur home she shares with her daughter Kathy Carllile, an active Atlanta blues singer before she began suffering seizures (Kathy was also born at Les Paul’s and Mary Ford’s house in NJ and even appeared on The Gong Show with Thumbs). Virginia and Thumbs' other daughter, Tammy, lives in Jacksonville, FL, and is also, not surprisingly, a musician (as are her two sons, though rap is their primary domain). And the family tradition continues with Ms. Virginia’s granddaughter, Metro Atlanta based artist Calli McGregor Southern (and her 17 year-old daughter Annabella has vocal talent in spades and plays piano, among other accompanying instruments, as does Calli's 15 year-old son Liam, acclaimed already for his prowess on the upright bass, guitar playing, and also his vocals — Liam actually plays Thumbs' old guitar, which was once Beatle George Harrison's, who passed it to Delaney Bramlett, who later gave it to Thumbs!). On one of my many trips to Kroger, Ms. Virginia even rewarded my curiosity with a CD, Four Lady Thumbs: The Carllile Women that she and her girls released in 2006 — produced and recorded at no cost to them by a fan, a customer that knew Tammy from the dry cleaners she co-owns and who arranged for a live show at 800 East Studios back on April 30, 2006.

Thumbs and Virginia headed to the Grammy's in 1975.

Last summer when I asked Ms. Virginia's what she wanted for her birthday, she said she already had everything she wanted. But I know what a true gift it would be to her and to her family — and the lasting legacy of Thumbs Carllile — if his important contributions to country music were to someday be formally acknowledged by the Country Music Hall of Fame. A 2015 story about 95 year-old country star Rose Lee Maphis working as a greeter at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum reminded me of Ms. Virginia working as a greeter at Kroger. 2015 was also the same year Little Jimmy Dickens, with whom Thumbs played, passed away, and Dickens had been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame back in 1983. Roger Miller passed away in 1992 and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995. Thumbs' recent inclusion in Decatur Cemetery's "Lives That Made The City" walking tour also made me think of the nearby grave of yet another lauded Georgia country star that never made it into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Over at Sylvester Cemetery in East Atlanta, on Fiddlin' John Carson Lane, are the family burial grounds of Fiddlin' John Carson — made extra famous, of course, by the Charlie Daniels song "The Devil Went Down To Georgia" (yep, Johnny is the fiddle player). Thumbs and Virginia Carllile's life journeys may have physically led them away from Nashville, but their hearts stayed forever tuned to Music City, and their plucky legacy still reverberates. But sometimes Nashville is unforgiving if you leave.