Country Music Legend to Grand Marshall holiday parade and perform solo concert

By Ron Fitzwater

Country music legend and star of the historic Grand Ole Opry, George Hamilton IV has seen a lot of changes

in country music in the 50 plus years he has been performing. Stars have come and gone, but Hamilton has kept it "close to the ground" and where others have outgrown the genre, he has taken his talents back to the people in a series of solo-acoustic shows he performs all around the world.

Fans of Hamilton, as well as friends and supporters of the Ashe County Library will have the opportunity to see him perform one of the special shows this Saturday, Nov. 15 at the West Jefferson United Methodist Church.

However, Hamilton's appearance Saturday at the 7:30 p.m. WJUMC performance will not be his only one of the day, as he will be the Grand Marshall for the annual West Jefferson Holiday Parade beginning at 2 p.m..

Hamilton spoke via phone, and said he was looking at his upcoming day in West Jefferson as a sort of homecoming.

"I'm excited to be coming in for the Holiday parade. I've never been there for that. I have often heard about it, and often thought I'd like to be in Ashe County for the parade but it seems like I'm usually overseas or somewhere out on the road that weekend."

"I'm looking forward to it. It is like coming home for me because so many of our ancestors came from that area.

"Our great grandfather, George the First in our family, immigrated to Ashe County from Winston-Salem and settled in Beaver Creek back in the 1800s. The Hamilton family lived in that valley there near St. Mary's Church, which they were instrumental in helping to get started and helped to build it as well."

Add to that, Hamilton's brother Cabot makes Ashe County his home where he heads up the county Chamber of Commerce.

Hamilton said that initially he was invited to be the Grand Marshall of the parade "but then the folks from the library asked me to do a little pickin' and singin' on the evening of the parade. So, I'm really excited about the whole day. But especially because my family is coming up for it, and we are going to have us a Hamilton family reunion, before I leave on tour to Canada and England.

"We are going to do a program called 'Thanksgiving in the Country'. It is a one man show with songs and stories of the pilgrims and their journey to America and of the first American Thanksgiving."

Hamilton said that the song and story format will tell the pilgrims tale beginning with their formation as a group in England and will include the history of the seldom talked about exile of the group to Holland.

"We include all of the traditional Thanksgiving hymns that folks are familiar with such as 'Let Us Gather Together to Ask the Lords Blessings' and 'Come Ye Thankful People Come'. There are a lot of songs that everybody knows and I encourage people to join in and sing along."

As well as being entertaining, Hamilton likes to think of the show as an educational experience as well as a sharing of traditional music.

"I hope it will be a kind of learning experience for a lot of people. We have done a fair amount of research on the history of the people and their experiences coming over.

Hamilton said that along with the well known histories of the pilgrims and their lives, the show will also shed light on some of the more little known facts about them.

"We do talk a lot about the Founding Mothers. There is a lot of talk about the Founding Fathers but these brave women were vital for the survival of the community. A lot of them left home knowing that they would probably never see their parents and friends again."

The idea to do the show was inspired by several things not the least of which, the fact that Thanksgiving is a very special family oriented holiday.

"Thanksgiving is second only to Christmas as a family holiday, and some think of Thanksgiving as a sort of family reunion because they usually go to Grandma's and Grandpa's house even if they can't get there on Christmas," he said adding that it is also the most "American of holidays."

Hamilton said that the history of the show actually began in England.

"A few years ago I was in Yorkshire, England and I had been invited to a little school near Duncaster, to do a program for the students. It was on Thanksgiving Day, which of course they don't celebrate, but the teachers and students had decorated the cafeteria with turkeys and pumpkins and pictures of pilgrims and surprised me with turkey and dressing and cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes, a real Thanksgiving dinner. It just delighted me. The principal told me that most of the pilgrims came from that area. It really made me aware that it all started in Yorkshire, in the north of England, when these people decided to break away from the state church and have their own form of religion.

"From there I began to research and pick up songs that most everyone knows from school days. My wife was a teacher and she was a great source of stories and poems about the pilgrims she had collected to use with her students, and she had a lot to do with putting the show together."

Over time Hamilton said the show was fine tuned and is now a concert service with a lot of history and a lot of congregation style singing. "It is the type of program where we try to involve everybody and so we hope to have a good time," he said.

In his career, Hamilton has played in just about any type of venue imaginable but has come to love the smaller one-man show format.

"I've been a member of the [Grand Old] Opry for 48 years and I still do Grand Old Opry package shows where some of us go out on the road and play for a few days, and I do a fair amount of country music work here in America and in Canada. But I find that these days the solo-acoustic, evening shows in churches really give me the most satisfaction and joy because of the one-on-one. It is just you and the people and you get a chance to sing and share and interact. It is really an intimate thing and it engages the audience and makes them more than just spectators. It is meaningful and inspirational," he said.

Hamilton has indeed seen a lot since he first started in the business, and sees nothing but good things for the future of country music

"I may be a bit of a Pollyanna about it, but I have a positive attitude. On one hand there is one group of young performers who grew up on Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top and the Allman Brothers and those kids play sort of country-rock style. But along side of them we have a whole new generation of talented kids who have taken an interest in Bluegrass and Mountain music. I think the Bluegrass side of things is what has kept us rooted to our heritage and kept us honest."

Hamilton finds a lot of that honesty right here in the High Country.

"You know there is a lot of music up in these hills. My friend Wayne Henderson just across the mountain there is one of the world's best thumb style guitar pickers, and of course Doc Watson is from Deep Gap. I've got a feeling that if we went back far enough that some of Doc's ancestors used to know some of the Hamilton boys from Beaver Creek.

Hamilton said that the many music festivals in the area such as Merlefest in Wilkesboro, "encourage many singers and musicians to settle the area.

"That, along with the flowering of the arts community there in West Jefferson, is bringing new life to the area."
Not long after Hamilton leaves Ashe County to begin his holiday tour, he will be in Yorkshire, England, the home town of Pilgrim Father, William Bradford, in the church he was baptized in to perform the show.

Tickets for the show are $15, and on sale now at the Ashe County Public Library and at Bluemoon Guitars and Music in West Jefferson.