Fred Russell was one of the best-known and most-popular sportswriters in the South, as well as one of the wittiest and certainly the most enduring. In 1998, at the age of ninety-two, he was still turning out regular columns, a practice that Randy Horick, a writer for Nashville Scene magazine, found awe inspiring. In a 1998 profile of Russell, Horick called Russell a transcendent figure "who has been a sportswriter longer than most people have been alive," writing more than 12,250 columns and befriending four generations of sportswriters and athletes over eight decades.

Frederick McFerrin Russell was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on 27 August 1906 to John E. and Mabel McFerrin Russell. John Russell was a journalist for a brief period of time, having started a weekly newspaper. When it failed, he moved to Nashville, where he worked as an assistant to a hotel and restaurant operator, developing "a fondness for the horse...