Tonya Maxwell

tmaxwell@citizen-times.com

ARDEN - No matter the instrument in hand – be it a scalpel to re-sculpt a nose ravaged by skin cancer or a bow to coax longing tunes from a fiddle – a doctor who died in a puzzling shooting played it with one part technical prowess, one part creative inspiration.

“He’s an artist first and foremost, and he channeled that art into his job as a surgeon,” friend Roxanna Whittington said of Dr. Frank Buddy McCutcheon, Jr.

“What he had to do required an artistic eye, and he was very good as a cosmetic surgeon. That art was also channeled through the music,” Whittington said. “He was the damnedest person I’ve ever known. He was absolutely evenly right- and left-brained.”

McCutcheon, 64, was found dead of a single gunshot on July 16 in his Arden home. Buncombe County sheriff’s detectives are investigating the case as a possible homicide, one that came amid a financial investigation into his practice at Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville by the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

He obtained his North Carolina medical license in 1982, and continued to hold an active physician certification in Arkansas, his home state. Neither shows a complaint or action by a medical board and online doctor review sites indicate patients were happy with his service.

Public records show no financial or criminal troubles, adding to the mystery surrounding McCutcheon’s death. Investigators continue to piece together clues – a heartbreaking 911 call, a backdoor left open, a gun found outside.

But as questions linger, McCutcheon’s many friends prefer to remember a doctor who, in musical circles, was better known for his skill in plucking an old-time banjo tune or playing a fiddle in an Irish jam session than his life’s work as a reconstructive surgeon.

And more recently, he had set up a studio in the yellow house he shared with his wife on Tree Top Drive, where longtime friend and singer-songwriter Whittington last year recorded her first album, “Muse.”

Whittington, now of Greeneville, Tennessee, had once worked in McCutcheon’s office and admired his concern and careful explanations to patients. But they also shared a musical affinity, and as she began penning songs, McCutcheon volunteered to produce her album, also accompanying her with instruments including the guitar, banjo and drums.

“He engineered and mastered it and we were about to start a new project this past weekend,” Whittington said. “He was my brother, my mentor, my family, my musical perfect counterpart. He was my beautiful friend, and he’s not here.”

‘Renaissance man’

McCutcheon had graduated from the University of Arkansas in 1978, going on to complete residencies at that school for general and hand surgery. In 1984, he finished a plastic surgery residency at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine, now known as the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, and returned to Little Rock.

He had long been musical, growing up with rock 'n' roll roots, though he later turned his ear to music a century older, celebrating battle hymns of a divided republic, friends said.

Scotty Garrett, of Mississippi, met McCutcheon about 1990. The men, Civil War history buffs, got together a few times a year with people across several states, reenacting the War Between the States.

“I remember when he started playing banjo, he stunk, as anybody would when they first pick it up,” Garrett said. “But he was a man of singular character when he put his mind to a thing. It wasn’t very long, within a couple of events, he was getting pretty good on that banjo.”

“Pretty good” became adept, Garrett said, and after a day’s battle was done, McCutcheon and another banjoist would sit at a campfire, strumming tunes originally composed by Confederate soldiers mourning fallen friends or longing for loves back home. The men would pluck entertaining tunes of their own making, not quite appropriate for church or polite company.

“I won’t repeat those,” Garrett said.

McCutcheon and his wife, Brenda, would attend evening balls, meticulous about period costumes true to a South long passed, and about 1999, the couple looked to the mountains of North Carolina. They later opened Cosmetic Surgery of Asheville on McDowell Street.

The couple had no children, but remained tied to Arkansas, particularly Fayetteville, where his four siblings live.

Not long after the move to Asheville, McCutcheon dropped into an Irish jam session at downtown bar Jack of the Wood and there met lifelong fiddler Beanie Odell. He asked for violin lessons. She obliged.

Soon, McCutcheon joined the Celtic gathering.

The informal group met for years, though it diminished as people moved away and Odell, now of the band The Red Wellies, lost touch with McCutcheon.

But the friendship quickly rekindled when she reached out in a recent email, and she was happily surprised to find his musical talents had only broadened.

On a SoundCloud channel, McCutcheon posted several songs he had sung and mastered, playing all instruments himself.

“I remember back in the old days, at one party, he might have picked up a banjo and sang one old-time tune, which doesn’t really tell what kind of voice you have,” Odell said, learning through the internet that her old friend had a rich and resonant voice. “Buddy was a reserved person, but creatively, and just in his voice, I hear so much freedom. He’s just belting it out, in all levels of it.”

She points particularly to an Appalachian spiritual, “Bright Morning Stars,” where McCutcheon harmonizes with himself. In an email, he told her he’d like a version of the song to be played at his funeral one day.

In it, she also hears his technical prowess for melding the many vocal and instrumental tracks, and remembered that McCutcheon gave her a computer, her first one. He had introduced her to a program that slowed down music, now a standard tool in every folk singer’s recording kit.

She remembers also his knack for cooking, particularly a shortbread, and Odell still keeps and uses his salsa recipe, written on a napkin.

“He was just a Renaissance man,” she said.

Muse, lost

In the wake of his death, the clinic the McCutcheons built is permanently closed. Search warrants filed by Buncombe County sheriff’s detectives in the death investigation indicate the couple days earlier had been contacted by the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

The agency, which examines a range of possible tax violations, was investigating possible embezzlement from the clinic and a spokesman declined further comment about any pending case.

A finding of wrongdoing could result in fines or criminal charges.

McCutcheon was discovered with a fatal gunshot wound to the head about 3:30 a.m. July 16, according to a 911 call made by his wife. In it, she describes how she was roused by her dog, and went downstairs to find her husband. He snored and liked to sleep with the television on, and so the couple slept in separate rooms.

“He never locks the backdoor and the backdoor was open,” she said through tears, the dispatcher often urging her to breathe in and out.

“Please hurry,” Brenda McCutcheon said, crying. “What am I going to do?”

Officials have said little about the case, but search warrants returned over the weekend indicate they are pursuing a homicide investigation, and noted that a gun believed to belong to the couple was found outside the house.

Online, well-wishers offered condolences, with some patients thanking both McCutcheons for their compassion as they faced medical procedures, and crediting his surgical skill.

In a happier online offering from 2001, McCutcheon and banjoist Clarke Buehling were recorded at Warren Wilson’s Sage Café in audio that is now housed with the Digital Library of Appalachia.

The men played several 19th century ragtime selections and jigs, with McCutcheon sometimes accompanying on the bones, clicking them together in a staccato percussion.

“Dr. McCutcheon here is going to play the bones,” Buehling said. “Where did you get those bones doctor?”

“I got these bones from the last person who said he didn’t like my music,” McCutcheon said, drawing laughter from the audience.

Buehling, a professional musician of Fayetteville, Arkansas, would stay with the McCutcheons on North Carolina trips, last in 2014, when he was named the three-finger banjo champion at the Charlie Poole Music Festival in Eden.

“He’s a great loss. He was an anchor for me,” Buehling said. “He was someone I admired quite a bit. He seemed to have it together. He had the medical practice and the home and a beautiful wife. He would go to the British Isles with his re-enactor friends. They would visit pubs and historic sites. He always had something going.”

The latest "something going" was supposed to be a new album in collaboration with Whittington, still trying to fathom that her musical counterbalance is silenced.

“A hundred times a day, I have a re-remember that he’s dead. That’s how often I think, ‘Oh, I need to tell Buddy this, I have to ask Buddy that,’ and I have to re-remember that I can’t do that, because he’s gone,” Whittington said. “I wasn’t ready for a Buddy-shaped hole it the world, and that’s what we’re all having to come to terms with, everybody that loved him.”