“Ain’t that right, Lady Mull” – BETWEEN THE TRACKS

Rev. J. Bazzel Mull and Lady Mull

When I drifted into Knoxville in the early ’80s, I holed up in the old and storied 1920s Maplehurst Court apartments alongside a gaggle of retirees, grad students, the odd professor, and a smattering of divorced types like myself. I had a soft spot for the place, even though I greeted each morning through a window that stared directly into a lineup of car and truck grills. My apartment was on the basement level.

And a handful of locals stood out so bright I still see them when I close my eyes, even all these years later.

There was the legendary Cas Walker, a former Mayor of Knoxville—stooped shoulders, silver hair slicked back, always in a suit as if he’d just stepped off a campaign poster. He was the quintessential man-of-the-people, a hometown boy who’d parlayed a mom-and-pop grocery into a Cash & Carry empire.

Every Thanksgiving, he’d climb to his rooftop and heave frozen birds into a cheering crowd—long before WKRP made it a national joke—shouting “They’re frozen, folks!” as if it explained everything.

Then he’d herd you through his aisles with a booming “Good to see y’all. Y’all come back now!” and ensure you his parking lots were safer than Fort Knox, because he said so. In city council chambers as Mayor, while aldermen hollered about budgets and barroom brawls, Cas sat up on that dais like a sheriff calming a jailhouse riot.

Next was “Cue Ball,” a lean but hefty Black Vietnam vet whose shiny scalp caught the streetlights miles away. He smelled of strong coffee and damp blankets—like a memory you couldn’t shake. I’d slip him an extra few dollars, pull up a folding chair, and listen as he rattled off stories of the Mekong Delta or the honky-tonk bars he drifted through afterward. Those afternoons kept him laughing and kept him out of the courthouse. His full tale deserves its own chapter someday.

And every weekday at 5 a.m., there’d be Rev. J. Bazzel Mull and Miz Mull in glorious duet on Cas Walker’s TV show. His voice cracked like an old barn door hinge: “Ain’t that right, Miz Mull?” And her answer, warm as buttered biscuits: “That’s right, Mr. Mull.”

They were a porch-light beacon, stirring memories of Sundays at Goodsprings Church, down on the knobs in rural western Kentucky, and of fresh-cut biscuit dough waiting to be baked to perfection by my Aunt Anzie.

Of those four, maybe Cue Ball is still out there under the streetlamp—let’s hope so. But both Cas and Rev. and Mrs. Mull have long since ridden off into those great pastures beyond our sight. I was lucky enough to shake each of their hands once, to thank them for steering this Kentucky country boy through some choppy waters.

Which brings me to Reverend Mull’s extraordinary reach—how a humble hillbilly preacher ended up quoted in American novels and even invited to the White House.

When I first started my so-called “important” gig at the biggest federal agency in Knoxville forty-five years ago, I’d sometimes spot an elderly couple shuffling to the post office.

He wore dark glasses—though his eyes were blind—and she hung onto his arm like a lifeline, her hair piled so high it seemed to graze the ceiling fan. I’d watched the Mulls every morning and knew who they were. To me, an old country boy now in the big city, they were celebrities.

One crisp autumn morning, I mustered every ounce of nerve as I walked from Maplehurst to Peruloi’s Café for my daily breakfast to speak to them.

When I see them, the Mulls, had stopped in the golden wedge of sunlight beside the battered red mailbox, it’s as though the current of the whole city bends for a moment to the significance of their presence.

I slow my walk, heart thumping in my chest, because I’ve rehearsed this myriad times in my head but never quite believed I’d manage it. The closer I get, the more I realize Reverend Mull is smaller than I imagined—more fragile, perhaps, but in that way old trees are, their trunks gnarled and scarred but the heartwood undiminished. Miz Mull, upright and composed as a schoolteacher, keeps a gentle, stabilizing grip on his arm as they confer in low, familiar murmurs.

I stand there, shoes scuffing against the gritty sidewalk, and take in the little details: the crispness of his starched collar, the trace of aftershave hovering in the air, the faint shine on Miz Mull’s sensible shoes.

I hesitate at first, suddenly shy and painfully aware of my own youth and perpetual outsider status in this town, but then I remember how the Mulls’ voices have drifted through every morning of my divorced life as I listened to the Cas Walker Show while shaving.

What do you do when you meet a legend?

I clear my throat. “Excuse me, Reverend Mull,” I say, my voice higher and humbler than I intend, “I just—I’d be honored, really, to shake your hand.”

I am both terrified and elated. Miz Mull notices me first, smiling the kind of smile that makes you want to tell her every good or bad thing you’ve ever done. She leans in, gently steering his elbow toward the sound of my voice, and in that wordless gesture, I see half a century of practiced partnership, of translating the world to each other one small act at a time.

He turns, head cocked, and though his eyes are shielded behind the thick, dark glasses, it’s as if he sees me anyway. His hand finds mine, the skin papery but the grip firm—a farmer’s handshake, learned on the plow and then sanctified in the pulpit. His palm is warm, not just from the Tennessee sun but from the steady pulse of some private, enduring fire.

I realize then that I am not shaking hands with a celebrity so much as with a living archive: every callus, every freckle, every vein is a page in a story I already half-know from the radio and TV, from the church, from every gossiping neighbor who ever cared about the shape of goodness.

He smiles, a slow and gentle upturn of the lips that carves as many lines in his cheeks as in his brow. “Why, son, I’d be right glad to,” he says, in a voice that’s all gravel and honey, “You’re mighty kind to say so.”

The weight of humility in those words is almost unbearable. Miz Mull squeezes his arm, proud and protective, and for a flash, I envy them—not just their faith, which is absolute, but their faith and the love they have for each other. The kind of love and respect we all would want in our spouses after decades.

We stand there, hands clasped, a little tableau on a Knoxville sidewalk while the city slips by indifferent: men in coveralls chasing time clocks, panhandlers humming at the street corners, the grim procession of battered Fords and Chevrolets inching up the hill.

I stumble through an explanation—how his music reminded me of home, how the sound of his laughter brought back mornings on the farm, how my Aunt Anzie swore no one could put the fear of God in a man and still make him laugh like the Reverend Mull. He listens, nods with solemn appreciation, then says, “It’s the Lord’s work, and we’re just glad you turned an ear to it.”

I watch the Mulls drift away, arm in arm, and for a long time I just stand there, my own hand tingling as if I’ve touched a live wire. The encounter hangs over the rest of my day like a benediction.

Is it possible, I wonder, that a handshake could change the texture of your whole memory? Could a single word, spoken in kindness, redeem a lifetime of small failures?

I go to the café and order eggs and black coffee and sit, thinking of how a stranger’s faith might stick to your ribs better than any meal.

That was J. Bazzel Mull, host of Mull’s Singing Convention: a gospel extravaganza that crackled over AM airwaves and flickered on early morning TV screens for decades.

When he died on September 5th, 2006, the news rippled through East Tennessee like a stone dropped in still water. Even the sworn heathens—the backsliders nursing hangovers in roadside diners, the skeptics who’d long since traded their Bibles for science textbooks—found themselves pausing at 5 AM, coffee cups halfway to their lips, ears straining for that familiar crackling tenor that had been their unwitting alarm clock for decades.

His broadcast introduced generations to gospel’s brightest stars and launched dozens of careers—most famously a shy teenager from Sevier County named Dolly Parton, whose voice was like dew on wildflowers. But Mull’s most enduring legacy wasn’t musical at all. It was a four-word refrain that burrowed into American fiction and international diplomacy.

Knoxville city kids in the Sixties would cluster under oak trees before the bell, imitating Mull’s cracked tenor: “Ain’t that right, Miz Mull?” Then answer each other, “That’s right, Mr. Mull,” as if it were a secret handshake to baffle the new kids.

Cormac McCarthy even borrowed it in Suttree, his grim tale on the Tennessee River, and whispered it again beneath the hooves in All the Pretty Horses.

Then in the late Seventies, when the Panama Canal Treaty hung by a thread, President Jimmy Carter needed Southern votes—especially from Tennessee’s own Republican senator, Howard Baker.

Carter’s team invited Rev. Mull to the White House.

Picture it: a plain-spoken gospel preacher, tie crooked, seated before the Resolute Desk with his beloved wife.

Jeff Bradley—the reporter who snagged Mull’s interview for the New York Times—asked him what he thought of the meeting.

Mull leaned in, voice gravelly as a dirt road: “I’m strong for the signing of this Canal Treaty. Now, suppose 9,400 Japanese or Russian troops marched up and down the Mississippi? Even if it were our land, they’d be right in our backyards. You think we’d like that? We wouldn’t put up with it—and that’s just what they want Panama to do.”

He told the Times he was “as strong as ramps when it comes to politics,” surprising folks who assumed born-again Christians all flew the “America First” banner. “I’m a Democrat—I tell people Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem. If he’d been a Republican, it’d’ve been an elephant.”

Then, turning to his wife, he croaked, “Ain’t that right, Lady Mull?” Her simple, unwavering reply rang clear from New Orleans to Nashville: “That’s right.”

And that was J. Bazzel Mull—croaking his question to his patient wife, planting his faith in the morning air, and steering presidents and neighbors alike toward a higher cause.

Rest in peace, Reverend. You showed us that sometimes the simplest asking can swing the largest doors wide open.

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Read inspiring stories of faith, resilience, and love in Darryl Armstrong’s newest collection of short stories – BETWEEN THE TRACKS.

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