A few weeks back I interviewed Knox expat Douglas Stuart McDaniel about his new book, The Dark Water Gospel: An East Tennessee Anthology. As promised, we’re now sharing a chapter excerpt from it. It centers on Hazel Davidson (1923-1999), Knoxville’s infamous playgirl turned madam.
Want more where this came from? The Dark Water Gospel is available on locally at Union Ave Books downtown and The Hive Bookshop in Bearden. More info in the footnote at the bottom of this post.
Doug shared this introduction:
This one’s from The Dark Water Gospel, the book Becky French Brewer and I always said we were going to write together. Becky was a Knoxville political operative, a community historian, and the kind of friend who could read a city council agenda the way other people read tea leaves — and tell you, twenty minutes in, exactly which line item was going to come back and bite somebody. She knew where the bodies were buried because she’d helped a few of them get there honest. When she passed, I finished the book in her voice. That was the only way it was ever going to get finished.
“The Madam and the Trash Can” sits near the heart of the anthology. It’s one of those East Tennessee stories that everybody half-knows and nobody quite tells straight — about a woman who ran a house, a town that pretended it didn’t notice, and what gets put out at the curb when the people who knew start dying off. It’s a chapter about memory and laundering, in both senses of that word. Becky loved this one. She also made me cut about four pages out of it, which was the right call, and I miss arguing with her about the rest.
Leslie’s earlier review in Inside of Knoxville called the book a gloves-off, deeply funny look at how civic power actually operates around here. I’d say “The Madam and the Trash Can” is the chapter where you can hear Becky laughing in the margins.
— Douglas Stuart McDaniel
This story is one of Becky Brewer’s finest, and it’s one I’ve tried to learn by heart. Hazel Davidson’s place on Hoitt Avenue looked innocent enough if you didn’t know any better. White clapboard, porch swing, window boxes filled with petunias that wilted the minute they touched the air around her. The sign by the porch still read Room for Rent, though no one had paid for a night’s sleep there in years.
Hazel stood tall, her dark, glossy hair framing a face sharpened by years of style and survival. Her eyes missed nothing. Her perfume drifted through the air. When she greeted guests, you sensed the calculation beneath the laugh—a woman in control of the room.
She dressed in tailored skirts and sleeveless blouses for Sunday gatherings: nothing ostentatious, but everything coordinated—shoes, earrings, handbag. A poodle with a perfect cut and baby-blue nails accompanied her.
Inside, Hazel was staging her own kind of Sunday service. Fried chicken on silver trays. Pimento cheese in cut-glass bowls. A decanter of Early Times sweating beside a stack of hymnals no one had opened since the Eisenhower administration. The girls—Hazel never let anyone call them that—floated between the kitchen and parlor in sleeveless dresses and bright lipstick, carrying ashtrays.
Becky French Brewer had been there enough Sundays to know the rhythm: two hours of laughter, one hour of confession.
Hazel liked to play mother and priestess both, and if you stuck around till dusk, she might tell you who was sleeping with whom, or where a certain body was buried. She said it like gospel, and nobody doubted her.
That was why Becky went—what she called R&I: research and intelligence. Every political campaign in Knoxville and Knox County ran on gossip before it ran on votes, and Hazel’s parlor was where most of the truth got edited.
You could pick up more intel there over a plate of fried chicken and collard greens spread out across Hazel’s porcelain kitchen drainboard than you’d get in three weeks at the courthouse. Who was buying off whom, who was running out of cash, who’d been seen leaving the wrong house or the wrong bar after dark. Hazel had a way of making it sound like weather.
She didn’t trade secrets for money. She traded them for attention, and she knew Becky was a woman who could be trusted.
Becky took notes in her head. The names, the slip-ups, the laughter too sharp to be innocent. She wasn’t there to judge—she was there to remember.
If you worked in politics long enough in Knoxville, you learned that righteousness was mostly a matter of timing. And Hazel Davidson had the best timing in town.
That afternoon, the guest list leaned heavy on politics and perfume. A city councilman nursing a hangover. Two realtors who treated adultery like sport. And in the corner chair, Charles “Chubby” Smith himself—publisher of The Knoxville Journal, Knoxville’s self-appointed Republican conscience.
Chubby was a large man, not just in body but in appetite. His laugh filled the room before he did. He could make any sentence sound like a headline.
“Hazel, darling,” he said, forking a deviled egg, “you could run the Chamber of Commerce if you wanted. You’ve already got better attendance.”
Hazel smiled and poured him another drink.
“Sugar, I don’t recruit members. They recruit themselves.”
He winked, satisfied, then turned. “Becky, you oughta come down to the newsroom sometime. See what an honest operation looks like.”
Becky laughed, because that’s what you do when you’re dating the publisher and most of your friends live in moral gray.
He’d taken Becky to dinner twice that month—always at the Tropicana Room, the dim-lit basement bar off Gay Street next to the Andrew Johnson Hotel where late-night jazz covered up a multitude of sins. Always after his wife’s charity meetings. She liked him in the way a girl likes a thunderstorm: powerful, noisy, dangerous up close.
Hazel caught her watching him and said, “Don’t get lost in that one, baby. He writes his own absolution every morning.”
Outside, cicadas rattled. Inside, the record player hissed through a Buddy Holly tune, and Hazel’s poodle barked at the sound of a car door slamming somewhere down the block.
Then came the low hum of engines.
Hazel froze, hand mid-air with the cigarette. Chubby looked up, eyes narrowing behind his horn-rimmed glasses. Becky had heard that sound before—unmarked cars rolling slow, one after another. The Knoxville Morals Squad, making its rounds.
Hazel stubbed out her cigarette and exhaled.
“Well,” she said, smoothing her dress, “looks like the Lord’s decided to send visitors.”
The girls scattered. One dove behind the piano, another straight through the kitchen and out the back door. Chubby stood but couldn’t quite decide where to go. The big man who ran the city’s news machine suddenly looked like a child caught in his daddy’s liquor cabinet. Becky, nonplussed, remained poised and grinning on a kitchen stool next to the platter of fried chicken, cigarette in hand.
Hazel pointed toward the back porch. “Trash cans are empty. Pick one.”
Chubby blinked, sweating, as if he thought she was joking.
She wasn’t.
Becky watched him lumber down the steps, red-faced, cursing under his breath. The lid clanged shut, and the only sound left was the crickets.
Hazel turned, perfectly composed.
“You see, Becky? That’s Knoxville for you. All our headlines end up in the garbage sooner or later.”
Then she smiled and went to answer the knock at the front door.
Hazel opened the door before they could knock twice.
Detective Grady Moser stood there with two younger officers and a clipboard, hat in hand like a deacon about to apologize for something. His tie was crooked, his face too smooth for a man pretending to be righteous.
“Evening, Miz Davidson,” he said, his voice half polite, half hungry. “We’ve had some complaints. Loud music, unfamiliar traffic. You mind if we take a look around?”
Hazel leaned against the doorframe, cigarette glowing.
“Well, Officer Moser, I do declare—if this is about my guests, I can assure you they’re all God-fearing taxpayers. Some of ‘em even work for the county.”
She smiled.
He cleared his throat. “Just a routine inspection, ma’am.”
Behind him, the younger cop shifted his weight, staring past her shoulder into the parlor. He looked too young to be in vice. Too curious to be innocent.
Hazel stepped aside. “Well, come on in, then. But wipe your feet. I just mopped.”
From her chair near the window, Becky could see Moser’s reflection in the mirror as he scanned the room—table still set, whiskey glasses half-full, chicken bones piled like evidence of a better hour.
Hazel followed his eyes and said, “You’re welcome to a plate, honey. Lord knows the city don’t pay you enough to ruin your own Sunday.”
He didn’t answer. Just moved toward the hallway, checking rooms that already knew too many secrets.
Outside, Chubby rustled in his metal coffin. Becky heard the faintest clang—lid shifting, maybe a muffled curse. A dog barked, sharp and accusing.
Hazel froze for a split second. Then, with perfect calm, she called out toward the back door.
“That’s just a raccoon fiddling with my garbage, officer. I like to keep the garbage where I can see it.”
Moser gave a small, suspicious smile. He knew she was mocking him, but the words didn’t quite stick.
He opened the pantry, peeked into the kitchen, then came back to the parlor. “You running anything illegal here, Hazel?”
She laughed, soft and lazy. “Darlin’, everything’s illegal if you try hard enough.”
That broke him. A small grin flickered and died. He reached into his coat and pulled out a folded paper—a search warrant that probably wouldn’t hold up five minutes in court.
“Now, Hazel—” he began, but she cut him off, lifting her hand.
“Don’t ‘now Hazel’ me, Grady. You know who signs your paycheck. Same folks eating my deviled eggs last week.”
The room went still. Even the ceiling fan seemed to pause.
Then she reached for her purse, drew out a small envelope—brown, folded twice—and set it on the silver tray beside the whiskey.
“For the trouble,” she said. “And the gas it took to get here.”
He looked at it, then at her, and nodded—just a ghost of a nod.
He tucked the envelope into his jacket. “We’ll file this under community relations.”
“Good idea,” Hazel said, lighting another cigarette. “And tell the chief I’ll pray for him next Sunday—if I can remember which church he goes to.”
They left without taking notes. The youngest one tipped his hat to Becky on the way out, eyes full of questions he’d never be old enough to ask.
When the sound of engines faded, Hazel waited a long minute before calling out, “You can come up for air now, Mr. Publisher.”
The trash can lid clanged, then lifted, and Chubby emerged— sweating, pale, eyes wide like a child who’s seen a ghost.
Hazel handed him a towel. “Honey, you smell like last week’s paper under a mess of chitlins on Market Square,” she said.
He tried to laugh, but the sound came out flat. “You could’ve warned me.”
“I just did,” she said. “Next time, bring your own headline.”
Becky couldn’t help it—she started laughing.
Hazel smiled, poured three bourbons, handed one to Chubby and one to Becky.
“To Knoxville,” she said. “Where the garbage is cleaner than the people.”
They drank to that.
• • •
Morning came gray and damp.
Becky bought a Knoxville Journal from the box outside Long’s Drug Store, still damp with dew. Front page: VICE RAID CLEANS HOUSE—PROMINENT CITIZENS COOPERATE
No names. No addresses. No photographs. He knew better than to mess with Hazel Davidson.
Just the usual sermon about “moral integrity” and “the importance of vigilance.” Chubby’s own byline sat smugly at the top, like he’d written it from some lofty, god-fearing perch—not from inside a trash can full of chicken bones and bourbon bottles.
Becky read it twice, standing there on the sidewalk, looking for signs. She felt something cold settle behind her ribs. Not anger, not shock—just realization that every city lies about itself, and every lie needs someone to write it down.
By afternoon, Hazel’s house looked as if nothing had happened. Laundry on the line. Radio humming gospel. The air already forgiving.
Becky slipped an envelope into her mailbox—a clipping of the article, folded once, with a note scribbled on the back in blue ink:
“Guess you can’t make clean soap without some kinda lie.—B.”
Hazel called that evening.
“Well, baby, you’ve got to admire him,” she said. “Takes a real newspaperman to hide inside his own story.”
Becky could hear the clink of her ice glass, the slow exhale of smoke.
“They’ll come back,” Hazel said. “They always do. Knoxville men are like stray dogs—bark all night, then come scratchin’ at your door.”
She wasn’t wrong.
A few weeks later, Chubby invited Becky to dinner again, all smiles and apologies. She told him she was busy washing her hair. He laughed, thinking it was a joke.
Hazel kept her Sunday gatherings smaller after that. Fewer men in suits, more women who didn’t flinch when the sirens passed. She liked to say she was redecorating.
Sometimes, when the air got too still, Becky would think about that night—the flash of police lights on Hazel’s white porch, the sound of Chubby’s breath echoing inside that metal drum, and Hazel, standing there in her pearls, playing Knoxville’s oldest game: sin and survival.
• • •
Years later, Becky told me the story again—three times, maybe four—each retelling slower, as if she wanted to be sure I’d get it right. We were in a bar off Central Avenue, her drinking sweet tea and me two bourbons deep, the jukebox low and mournful. Someone at the counter asked if it really happened.
I smiled, stirred my drink, and said, “True enough for Knoxville. The publisher of the Journal hid in a garbage can while his paper shouted about sin. The only clean thing that night was the whiskey.”
They laughed. I didn’t. Becky just watched me over her glass, the corners of her mouth curling into something between pride and pity. She’d been waiting for that moment—when I finally understood that in Knoxville, truth doesn’t need proof, only timing.
• • •
Hazel Davidson was a real Knoxville figure—born in 1923 near Strawberry Plains, once a model, later known as the “playgirl” who ran a discreet network of brothels from the 2300 block of Hoitt Avenue and Riverside Drive. Her name appears in court records and local archives through the 1960s and ’70s, often linked to vice raids that produced more headlines than convictions.
Charles “Chubby” Smith died in 1980 when his World War II fighter plane crashed on a northeast Georgia farm.
The tale of “The Madam and the Trash Can” comes from Knoxville’s oral tradition, passed down by the late Becky French Brewer, who swore the publisher of The Knoxville Journal once hid in Hazel’s trash can during a vice raid. Whether fact or fiction, it remains one of the city’s favorite parables about sin, survival, and public virtue gone private.
Signed editions of The Dark Water Gospel: An East Tennessee Anthology by Douglas Stuart McDaniel (Premium Pulp Fiction) are available for $27.99 from CitizenOne.world here, or you can order The Southern Civic Noir trilogy as a bundle for $69.99 here. The book is also available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and other booksellers including (shop local!!!) Union Avenue Books downtown and The Hive Bookshop in Bearden, with author bookplates.
Discover more from Inside of Knoxville
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.