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It took a few tries on Saturday night, but once those aged hands ran the bow across the strings, Charlie Acuff remembered.

Slow and tentative, hands trembling from the effects of age and deteriorating health, the local legend cradled the instrument that made him famous and searched the shadows of his 90-year-old mind for a song.

Around him gathered friends -- family members, for all practical purposes, because of their love and respect for Acuff, who is considered one of the elder statesman of East Tennessee music. With the Christmas tree in the community room of Morningview Village behind them, they followed his lead and, for about an hour, time stopped.

"He really grinned," said Juanita Johnson, Acuff's bass player for the past 30 years. "It just kept getting wider and wider when he saw everyone there playing with him. I think it was really good therapy for him, and I was actually a little surprised to see that he was able to remember all of the old tunes."

The impromptu Morningview jam session was a precursor to Saturday night's celebration at Music Row of Maryville in honor of Acuff's 90th birthday. His declining health prevented him from taking part in the festivities, so his friends decided to bring the music to him. After all, he's a man whose contribution to Appalachian music will be celebrated long after he's gone.

Acuff was born in Union County, the same birthplace of his famous second cousin -- country music legend Roy Acuff. The year was 1919, and young Charlie suffered from chronic allergies that made growing up in the country hard on him, his son relates. Charlie's father, Evart, built fiddles, and his grandfather, Charlie Boyd Acuff, was himself a fiddle player.

As a child, young Charlie moved in with his grandparents, who lived in Knoxville's Fountain City community; city living agreed with his frail constitution, and as he grew older, his grandfather decided to teach him to play the fiddle. "You just about got it -- play it again," and "You done pretty good -- play it again" became mantras that the young fiddler would use in later years, teaching others the craft. Eventually, he would learn more than 200 tunes from his grandfather, songs he would perform by heart for the rest of his life.

By 1938, Charlie Acuff and his brother, Gayle, had thrown in their lot with hillbilly musician Esco Hankins. Living back in Union County, the brothers had the backing instrumentation Hankins was looking for; Hankins had the transportation the two brothers needed to ply their trade on the road. They began making daily trips to Knoxville to perform on WROL-AM, traveling an hour and a half over backroads from Maynardville and returning to their hometown to go back to school. Their reputations grew around East Tennessee, and the brothers soon found themselves in demand at square dances, church socials and other functions in which a fast fiddle gave people an excuse to dance.

Also in 1938, Acuff's cousin Roy became a member of the Grand Ole Opry. Although there was a 16-year age difference between the two men, the young Acuff looked up to his more famous kin, and the man who would become known as the "King of Country Music" gave young Charlie a few words of advice. Shortly thereafter, however, history intervened -- World War II began, but Acuff was turned down for the draft because of back problems. At the time, ALCOA was hiring just about any male who wasn't fighting overseas, and so Acuff moved to Blount County, where he lives to this day, and got a job at the aluminum plant.

His days were spent on the line, but his nights belonged to music. With a fiddle made by his father in 1941 -- which he still plays today -- Charlie Acuff established himself as a showman and musician of reputable skill.

"He lived to play the fiddle, and he played all the time," Acuff's son, Boyd Acuff, told The Daily Times during a recent interview. "The thing about the fiddle is that it's the only instrument -- well, that and the banjo -- that you can dance to. The guitar is fine, but for the breakdown, square dancers wanted to hear that fiddle, and my dad could sure play it for them."

For a couple of decades, during the 1960s and '70s, Acuff stepped away from playing professionally, performing instead at family gatherings and in intimate settings with close friends. With the 1982 World's Fair, however, East Tennessee and its unique culture were under the world's spotlight, and Acuff's skills were in demand. He performed regularly at the fair with John Rice Irwin, who would found and run the Museum of Appalachia in Norris; that same year, he met Johnson for the first time, performing at her mother's birthday party. Acuff brought Johnson on board as his bass player, and together they performed at a number of memorable events -- Opryland, the Uncle Dave Macon Days festival (Acuff was the grand marshal of the parade) and on Garrison Keillor's acclaimed radio program "A Prairie Home Companion."

In 2005, he received a Tennessee Governor's Award in the Arts at a ceremony that included Memphis soul legend Isaac Hayes. A family man -- he was married for 57 years to the late Dorothy Wallace Acuff and fathered three sons -- Boyd, Gordon and the late Randall Acuff. He has six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, and countless "foster" children by whom he's related through music, many of whom showed up to Morningview on Saturday.

"It felt good to see him be able to fiddle as well as he did," Johnson said. "In fact, he called me (Monday) and wanted me to get another group together and come out there and play again."

According to Boyd Acuff, his father's clouded mind makes it difficult to remember recent events, but the past can be recalled with clarity. Which makes Saturday's Morningview jam session all the more remarkable.

"He was thrilled to get to see all of his friends, more than anything," Boyd Acuff said. "The next day I was up there, and he was still talking about it. He wanted to do it again. He forgets just about everything these days, but I don't think he'll ever forget that."