Master of the Big Board: The Life, Times, and Businesses of Jack C. Massey
Jack Massey is one of the unsung heroes of American business. To this day he is the only person ever to take three companies to the New York Stock Exchange: Kentucky Fried Chicken, Hospital Corporation of America, and Winner's Corporation. According to Forbes, he "deserves credit for creating the modern fast-food industry." He should get credit for for-profit hospitals as well. The list of people who claim Massey as a mentor includes one U.S. senator, two former Tennessee governors, and the Wendy's founder Dave Thomas. Incredibly, Massey did all of this after he tried to retire. Massey spent his childhood working in his uncle's drugstore in small-town Georgia. Passing the pharmacy exam and receiving his license at age 19 (two years below the minimum legal age), Massey built up a chain of drugstores in Nashville, which he expanded into a surgical supply business in 1937, and became a bank director and head of Nashville's Baptist Hospital. In 1961 he sold his surgical supply company and retired.
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Book details
- Author
- William Carey
- Imprint
- Cumberland House Publishing, an imprint of Turner Publishing Company
- Published
- Formats
- Hardcover
- Subjects
- Biography & Autobiography › Business
- Topics
- business biography · entrepreneurship · Kentucky Fried Chicken · Hospital Corporation of America · fast food industry · for-profit hospitals · Nashville · American business history
- ISBN-13
- 9781581824711
About the author
BILL CAREY is a Nashville-based author and journalist specializing in Tennessee and Nashville history, with work appearing in the Tennessean, Nashville Scene, WPLN public radio, and Nashvillepost.com. He is the author of Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History and Runaways, Coffles and Fancy Girls: A History of Slavery in Tennessee.
Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken is one of the best-selling Nashville history books ever published, receiving favorable reviews in the Harvard Business Review, Columbia Journalism Review, Wall Street Journal, and Oxford American. Carey also writes a monthly history column for Tennessee Magazine.
When he’s not writing, Carey leads Tennessee History for Kids, a nonprofit he founded in 2004 to support public school teachers with Tennessee history and social studies.
Bill lives in Nashville, Tennessee.