North Florida Music Hall of Fame

Chubby Wise

Born Robert White, in 1915, in Lake City; Chubby Wise moved to Jacksonville at 15 to pursue a career as a fiddler. Landed a touring gig with the Jubilee Hillbillies, went on to tour with Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys; later worked with The York Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Hank Snow, Red Allen, and the Stanley Brothers (who lived near Live Oak in the 1960s). Wise also recorded his own albums for the Starday and Stoneway labels. He is reputed to have been the co-composer (along with Ervin Rouse, who is generally listed as sole composer) of bluegrass standard “Orange Blossom Special.” The story goes that Wise and Rouse were part-time cabdrivers, waiting in the parking lot of Jacksonville’s Union Terminal, when they wrote the song named after the very train they were expecting (the engine of that famous train now sits in that same parking lot). Why Wise was not listed on the songwriter credits has never been properly explained.