Tommy Scott born 24 June 1917

Thomas Scott was born outside of Toccoa, Georgia, United States, and began playing the guitar at age ten. After high school he joined Doc Chamberlain's medicine show, and got his first job in radio on WTFL in Athens, Georgia in 1933. He also sold Vim Herb on the radio. After Chamberlain retired and gave Scott the patent medicines, he landed a regular job fronting the Uncle Pete and Minervy show on Raleigh, North Carolina's WPTF, and soon after this he was offered a job with Charlie Monroe becoming the first Kentucky Partner as a feature act - Rambling Scotty. 

He performed on the WWVA Jamboree in Wheeling, West Virginia with Monroe and was also a frequent soloist there, and did skits involving blackface and ventriloquism with "Luck McLuke" (a talking mannequin) which was said to be his favourite comedy routine throughout his career up to that point. Monroe and Scott started the Man-O-Ree medicine company selling Scott's patent laxative over the radio. The group moved to WHAS in Louisville, Kentucky, where he did the early morning show. His medicine and musical partnership came to an end with Monroe and he soon launched a tent show with Curly Seckler. 

He married his wife Frankie in 1940; the couple had a daughter, Sandra; both women became part of his stage show, his films and TV shows. In the 1940s he did radio transcriptions which were broadcast nationwide. By 1942 he had his own stage show traveling coast to coast, 'Ramblin' Tommy Scott's Hollywood Hillbilly Jamboree'. He began the Herb-O-Lac Medicine Company and later Katona Medicine Company selling laxatives and liniments. He soon joined the Grand Ole Opry and later went to Hollywood to begin a career in film and TV. Beginning with Carolina Cotton in 1949, Scott's road show operated six days per week from January through early December, featured Scott with some guest stars from film and TV. 

He returned to television in the 1950's with Tommy Scott's "Smokey Mountain Jamboree" in syndication around the country. Early television appearances also include Johnny Carson.  From 1949-1980 his touring stage show provided a vehicle for former western film stars to reach their public.

 Among those western stars were Carolina Cotton, Ray Whitley, Johnny Mack Brown, Sunset Carson, Monte Hale, Fuzzy St. John and Tim McCoy. Many others tried to sign on and some came for a day or two. Other stars included Uncle Dave Macon, Curley Williams, Billy Grammar, Junior Samples, Clyde Moody, "In the Heat of the Night" star Randall Franks among others. 

In the 1970s, Scott returned to his earliest roots and rebranded himself as "Doc" Scott, impressario of his own latter-day, nostalgia-themed medicine show. Until the mid-1990s when his wife was stricken with Alzheimer's, "'Doc' Scott's Last Real Old Time Medicine Show" visited nearly 300 towns each year across the United States and Canada. To date, the show, founded by "Doc" V. O. Chamberlain in 1890, has performed over 29,000 times in towns across America and Canada. It was at this time that Scott, wearing his trademark colourful clothes, red top hat and snake skinned shoes, endeared himself to millions of fans around the world. 

According to his autobiography, Snake Oil, Superstars and Me, published in 2007 and co-authored by Randall Franks and Shirley Noe Swiesz, that over almost 60 years, there can be few major country artists with whom he has not appeared and few major US or Canadian programmes on which he has not been featured. In subsequent decades he appeared on The Today Show, Late Night with David Letterman, and Oprah Winfrey. He was the subject of a PBS documentary Still Ramblin'. 

Scott's status as a treasure is evidenced by many accolades, including his nominations for the National Heritage Award, his 1976 placement in the Country Music Foundation's Walkway of Stars and the 1996 unveiling of his Georgia Music Hall of Fame exhibit, the museum's largest, in Macon.

With over 500 recordings to his credit, his chart success with included three titles "Rosebuds and You,""Dance With Her, Henry," and "Mule Train." He wrote around 300 of his recordings including "Rosebuds and You," recorded by numerous artists, and the bluegrass standard "Rainbow of My Dreams" popularized by Lester Flatt. He recorded for various labels, including 4-Star and King, and some early recordings were reissued in the 80s by the German Cattle label, who did a reasonable job of trying to improve the relatively poor recording quality of some of the original recordings. 

(Edited from Wikipedia, AllMusic, tommyscott.net & IMDb)