2012

George Hamilton IV was born in North Carolina on July 19, 1937. His father George, known as Hege, was vice president and manager of a company which made Goodies headache powders. The family included his mother, Mary Lilian and younger brother Cabot, lived in the town of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His grandfather introduced him to country music via his old Jimmie Rodgers records and The Grand Ole Opry to which they listened each weekend on the radio.  It was through him that young George first discovered country music.

By the time he was twelve George's fascination with country music had grown to the extent that he had not only bought his first guitar with money earned as a paper boy but had also persuaded his parents to allow him to travel alone by bus to Nashville. There he met his all time hero Chet Atkins as well as many more of his favorite country stars. During his high school years he and his band would play at civic luncheons, parties and other social events where people would give them the opportunity to entertain. The knowledge that his singing gave audiences pleasure further encouraged him to pursue a career in country music.

George was brought up in a Christian home where church and Sunday school played a very important part in life but his Moravian parents were far from repressive and supported their young son in his desire to join The Grand Ole Opry. Just in case his dreams did not come true, however, they urged him to complete his education. He entered the University of North Carolina as a freshman in 1955 then transferred to American University in Washington, DC a year later in order to combine his studies with regular appearances on the Jimmy Dean TV show.

In the summer of 1956 a song he did not much care for changed George's life. For some time he had been trying to persuade the owner of Colonial Records to give him a recording contract. About the same time a young songwriter named John D. Loudermilk submitted a song to Mr. Campbell entitled "A Rose And A Baby Ruth". Colonial's boss decided it was just right for George who only agreed to record it on condition that he could put one of his own songs, a rockabilly number entitled "If You Don't Know I Ain't Gonna Tell You" on the B side. The single got a national release and before he knew it George had a top five hit and a million seller on his hands, as well as "a manager, an agent and a bunch of people telling me what to do".

Tours with such stars as Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent and the Everly Brothers followed in which George supplied the teen ballads. In June 1958 and with his career as a pop star well established George married his high school sweetheart Adelaide Peyton. In late 1959 he took the brave step of turning his back on the music which had made him a star by moving to Nashville where he made a conscious effort to achieve his ambition in the field of country music. Chet Atkins got him signed to RCA where he was executive producer and was instrumental in having George invited to join The Grand Ole Opry, where he has been a member since 1960. The teen ballads like "High School Romance" and "Why Don't They Understand" were replaced by pure country material such as "Truck Drivin' Man" and "Abilene".

The mid-60s found George associating with folk artists whose involvement with the civil rights movement did not always go down too well in conservative Nashville. About this time he was falling under the influence of Canadian writers such as Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and Ian and Sylvia. The release of "Canadian Pacific" in 1969 saw the dawn of a new era. Appropriately, his highly successful Canadian TV shows were recorded in Hamilton, Ontario. He made several albums in Canada and won a Juno award for his services to Canadian country music.

Britain was to get its first visit from George in 1967. He performed at the first International Festival of Country Music at Wembley in 1969 and appeared there more often than any other American artist. His many TV series for the BBC brought him to the attention of a wider audience while his concert tours gained him yet more fans. When his Canadian TV shows were screened here on ITV at the same time as those on BBC, he made history by appearing on both channels at once. His neat appearance, clear gentle vocals and warm friendly personality have always ensured him of a welcome in the UK.

An offer to join Arthur Smith's TV show in North Carolina in 1972 gave the Hamiltons the opportunity to return to their home state where, for the next fourteen years, they lived in the Charlotte area.

He earned his familiar title of "International Ambassador of Country Music" when he became the first American country singer to perform in The Soviet Union and Prague. He insists that it all began as a joke with some of his British friends but the ambassadorial tag is well deserved as nobody has done more to make country music accepted and respected than George IV. He has appeared in not only America, Canada, Britain and Ireland but Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and many other European countries. In 1993 he visited Jamaica and Africa while filming a documentary on the Moravian church. As well as being shown on TV in the States it was sold on video.

1988 saw the start of George's highly acclaimed church tours with "A Country Christmas” in which he tells the Christmas story in a delightful combination of scripture readings, poems, songs and recitations, all with a country flavor. "Easter in the Country" and "Thanksgiving in the Country" followed, each breathing new life into the Easter and American Thanksgiving themes.

In the 90s George returned to Canada to record two excellent albums produced by Broadland International's Gary Buck.  It is difficult to believe that George celebrated forty years as an Opry member in the year 2000, for he is as full of enthusiasm for his work as always.  That same year, George was inducted into the North Carolina Music and Entertainment Hall Of Fame. Since many consider him North Carolina's best export, this was a well deserved award. 

George IV was given the ROPE (Reunion of Professional Entertainers) award for Entertainer of The Year in Nashville on 8th October 2009. Other nominees included Bill Anderson and Tom T Hall. 2010 started well with George celebrating his 50th anniversary as a member of The Grand Ole Opry. "It's been a real honour to have been associated with The Opry for this period of time," says George IV. "It's been my musical homeplace which I first started visiting as a teenager. Back then I would regularly catch a Greyhound Bus from North Carolina and dream of performing on The Opry. But never, in my wildest dreams, did I ever think that one day I would be celebrating 50 years as a member of The Grand Ole Opry."

George Hamilton IV passed away September 17, 2014

Born into a family of North Carolina cotton mill workers, Charlie and his family moved from Iredell County to Randolph County, finally settling at Haw River in Alamance County around 1900.  Poole acquired a love of banjo music before he reached his teens learning to play on gourd banjo that he made for himself. He was heavily influenced by his older cousin, Daner Johnson, who finger picked the banjo in a classical style on the model of such players as Fred Van Eps.  As a child laborer in the local cotton mill spinning room, Poole earned enough money to buy a real banjo for $1.50. Poole's early marriage ended in part due to his extreme wanderlust, which took him as far as Canada and Montana. During a "ramble" to West Virginia he encountered a crippled coal miner named Posey Rorer who was an exceeding fine old-time fiddler.  In 1920, Poole became Posey's brother-in-law after marrying Posey's sister Lou Emma who worked in the cotton mills in Spray( now Eden), North Carolina. From 1920 until his death in 1931, Spray would be Poole's home. Apart from working from time to time in the Spray Cotton Mills and making moonshine whiskey with Posey in Franklin County, Virginia, Poole and Rorer spent more and more of their time making music.  Aside from playing for country dances, the duo played at courthouses, train depots, mill gates, etc. busking for coins.

In the winter of 1924-1925 they, along with Poole's childhood friend and guitarist Clarence Foust, played a series of fiddle contests in West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee organized by a traveling preacher who eventually ran off with all of their money.  Poole and Rorer usually won the top prizes in their respective categories and though they never received any money for their efforts, they did establish reputations as outstanding musicians. In the summer of 1925 Poole along with Rorer and fellow musician from Spray, guitarist Norman Woodlieff, quit their local jobs and headed to New York.  Poole, who was illiterate at this point in his life, boldly decided to try to get an audition with a major record company in the city. His courage paid off when Frank Walker, the recording director for Columbia Records, decided to give the band, now dubbed the North Carolina Ramblers, a chance to record. Though the band received only $ 75 for their four songs recorded on July 27, 1925, the venture proved very profitable for Columbia.  The first release, DON'T LET YOUR DEAL GO DOWN BLUES b/w CAN I SLEEP IN YOUR BARN TONIGHT MISTER? sold a phenomenal 102,000 copies at a time when a hit record was considered to be anything that sold over 20,000. The next release, THE GIRL I LEFT IN SUNNY TENNESSEE b/w I'M THE MAN THAT RODE THE MULE 'ROUND THE WORLD, sold another 65,000 copies. Poole's snappy singing style and his sharp 3-finger banjo picking along with the tight fiddle work of Rorer and Woodlieff's  smooth guitar runs made the band's sound very distinctive and catchy. The hit records put the North Carolina Ramblers in great demand as they were now freed from the cotton mills to pursue music full-time. Poole and the band returned to New York six more time times to record. These sessions produced the very first recorded versions on such songs as WHITE HOUSE BLUES and IF I LOSE that are still sung and recorded by bluegrass musicians. Other Poole recordings such as SWEET SUNNY SOUTH, GOODBYE MARY DEAR, BUDDED ROSE, THERE'LL COME A TIME, MILWAUKEE BLUES, and LEAVIN' HOME among others are still revered by fans of old-time music.  Though the band underwent personnel changes with Roy Harvey of West Virginia replacing Norman Woodlieff and Lonnie Austin and then Odell Smith replacing Posey Rorer, the band continued to maintain the same high quality of musicianship. Spin off bands from the North Carolina Ramblers such as those led by Roy Harvey and Posey Rorer also produced important recordings including the very first recordings of FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW and I'LL ROLL IN MY SWEET BABY'S ARMS in 1931. These bands had a heavy Charlie Poole influence including 3 finger banjo picking and long bow fiddle style.

In the spring on 1931 Poole received a contract from a Hollywood studio to bring his band to California to play back-up in a movie.  During a prolonged celebration of what would have been a great opportunity to bring Poole's sound to a wider audience, Poole suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 39.  Poole in his short career had won many new fans to rural traditional music. His colorful personality and antics made him a legend in his own time and that legend continues to this day.  Tales are still told around the cotton mill towns and mountain villages about the time that Charlie Poole came to their town. He was and still is loved by his fans.

Born in Harris, North Carolina on October 27, 1908, DeWitt “Snuffy” Jenkins was the youngest of seven children with four brothers and two sisters.  Several in his family were musically inclined. He started entertaining at age five doing a clog dance for a sawmill group. He started playing a fiddle, but could not use the bow, so he plucked it like a mandolin.  He could play almost any acoustic instrument, but switched early from guitar to banjo because the strings hurt his fingers. He played strictly by ear and never read music. He graduated from Harris High School in Harris in 1925.  In 1927, he and his brother Verl started working together as a team, Snuffy on banjo and Verl on fiddle, playing at square dances and fiddlers conventions. They formed a group called “The Jenkins String Band” consisting of his brother Verl on fiddle, cousin Dennis Jenkins on guitar, friend Howard Cole, also on guitar and, of course, Snuffy on banjo.  He had seen pickers like Smith Hammett and Rex Brooks experimenting with using three fingers to try to play a more melodic rhythm. He tried it and mastered it quickly. He was the first known banjoist to play that style on the radio in 1934 on WBT in Charlotte on the Crazy Water Crystals barn dance. Ralph Stanley, Earl Scruggs and Don Reno all cited him as a major influence on their careers.  He was playing a gold Gibson Mastertone which he sold to Don Reno, who later traded it to Earl Scruggs for a guitar. That was the banjo Earl used as he rode the rocket to fame. In 1936, Snuffy joined J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers and on April 15, 1937, the band came to Columbia, South Carolina to perform on radio station WIS which was a 50,000 watt clear channel radio station. Legendary announcer Byron Parker, a musician and business manager who, at one time had represented Bill and Charlie Monroe, joined the group when J.E. Mainer left and the group came to be known as “Byron Parker’s Hillbillies.”   Their programs always contained comedy and it was during one of these capers that Parker gave DeWitt his nickname “Snuffy.” Shortly thereafter his lifelong friend and master fiddler, Homer “Pappy” Sherrill joined the group. After Byron Parker’s death in 1948, the group was renamed “The Hired Hands” in his honor. Snuffy married Margaret Cannon from Columbia and, in October of 1939, they had a son named Toby. In 1940, Snuffy bought a 1934 Gibson Mastertone RB-4 banjo at a pawn shop in Spartanburg for $40 which he used throughout his career. He played that banjo for the rest of his life, performing for more than half a century.  That banjo now resides in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee. Snuffy Jenkins passed away on April 29, 1990. His last performance had been a month before.

Four-time Grammy Award winner David Holt is a musician, storyteller, historian, television host and entertainer, dedicated to performing and preserving traditional American music and stories. Holt plays ten acoustic instruments and has released numerous award winning recordings of traditional mountain music and southern folktales.

Holt is well known for his television and radio series. He is host of public television’s “Folkways”, a North Carolina program that takes the viewer through the Southern Mountains visiting traditional craftsmen and musicians. David also currently hosts the PBS series “Great Scenic Railway Journeys”. He served as host of The Nashville Network’s “Fire on the Mountain”, “Celebration Express” and “American Music Shop”. He has been a frequent guest on “Hee Haw”, “Nashville Now” and “The Grand Ole Opry”. David can also be seen as a musician in the popular film, “O Brother Where Art Thou”.

David hosts “Riverwalk: Classic Jazz From The Landing” for Public Radio International. “Riverwalk”, in its thirteenth year, is broadcast nationally from San Antonio, Texas, and combines stories of the jazz greats told by Holt with the traditional jazz music of the Jim Cullum Jazz Band and guests including Lionel Hampton and Benny Carter.

In 2002, Doc Watson and David won two Grammy Awards for Best Traditional Folk Recording for “Legacy”, a three CD collection of songs and stories reflecting Doc Watson’s inspiring life story. Doc and David are currently touring together across the United States.

A native of Garland, Texas, Holt’s family moved to Pacific Palisades, California, while he was in junior high school. He recalls his early musical and storytelling influences: “I grew up in a family of informal storytellers, and there was plenty to tell about our wild and wooly Texas forefathers. Storytelling was just a natural part of family life for me. I never thought about telling stories in public until I began to collect mountain music and came across interesting and unusual anecdotes from mountain folks. I began to use these stories in concerts and realized the power storytelling holds.”

As for music, Holt says, “The only homemade music in our house was played by my father on bones and spoons that had been passed down in our family for five generations. In 1968, I sought out Carl Sprague, the first of the recorded singing cowboys. Mr. Sprague taught me to play the harmonica and regaled me with old-time cowboy stories. This experience introduced me to the excitement of learning from the source…. the old timers themselves.”

After graduating from the University of California at Santa Barbara magna cum laude in biology and art, Holt turned toward the southeastern mountains to pursue his growing interest in traditional music and storytelling. He moved to western North Carolina and immersed himself in the vital folk culture there. While collecting the traditional music of the mountains, Holt discovered folktales and true-life stories, which he began integrating into his concerts. He has been exploring and performing this unique form of entertainment ever since, using traditional music and stories in all his performances.

In 1975, Holt founded and directed the Appalachian Music Program at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is the only program of its kind in which students study, collect and learn traditional music and dance.

Since 1981, Holt has pursued a full-time career in entertainment. Today, he brings to the concert stage the fun and spirit of old-time music and storytelling. An evening with David Holt offers tales, ballads and tunes told, sung and played on the banjo, slide guitar, guitar, harmonica, bones, spoons and jaw harp. His audiences are constantly involved, learning to play the paper bag, applauding the vitality of his clog dancing, listening to the haunting sound of a 122 year old mountain banjo, or being spellbound by a ghost story.

The songs and tales Holt has collected for the past twenty years have become a part of the permanent collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to learn the unique music from the South’s last traditional hammered dulcimer player, Virgil Craven. Says Holt: “Many of the people I learned from saw wagon trains; now they are watching space shuttles. They’re the last of the pioneer generation. Their music and stories still hold a great deal of meaning and pleasure for us today.”

The U.S. State Department has sponsored Holt’s performances in many parts of the world as a musical ambassador, taking the sounds of American folk music to such diverse lands as Nepal, Thailand, South America and Africa.

Holt is a three-time winner of the Frets magazine readers’ poll for “best old-time banjoist.” In addition, Esquire Magazine selected Holt for its first “Annual Register of Men and Women Who Are Changing America” in 1984. Called the “the best of the new generation,” those chosen included such notables as Steven Spielberg, Sally Ride and Meryl Streep. All were selected for personal vision, originality and service to others.

Seventy-five years in any business is a long time, particularly in a musical group of any genre. Today, the Chuck Wagon Gang holds the distinction of being the oldest recording mixed gospel group still performing with ties to the original founding. By trade, the Carters were farmers, who migrated from place to place to pick cotton. The singing group came from humble beginnings in 1935, as the Carters found themselves in Lubbock, Texas, without enough money to buy medicine for a sick child, Effie. Dave Carter and two of his children, Lola and Ernest of his Carter Quartet (no relation to the Carter Family of Bristol, VA) arrived at radio station KFYO in Lubbock seeking live singing employment on radio in order to buy medicine for Effie. They landed the job, Effie soon re-joined them, and the Carter Quartet remained at the station for about a year.

The radio response had been so overwhelming that Mr. Carter decided to move his family to Fort Worth, Texas. The Carter Quartet was hired by the station, and instantly became Bewley's Chuck Wagon Gang. In addition to the group name change, came individual name changes as well for simplicity: D. P. ("Dad"), Anna (Effie), Rose (Lola), and Jim (Ernest). Their repertoire consisted of ballads, folk, western, and popular songs of the day, and one hymn or gospel song each day.

The group became very popular at WBAP. Two British record producers, Don Law and Art Satherly, heard them early on and quickly signed them to an exclusive recording contract with American Record Corporation. Their first recording sessions occurred at a makeshift recording studio at the Gunter Hotel, in San Antonio, Texas in 1936, where they recorded twenty-two titles of both gospel and western songs. "The Son Hath Made Me Free" was their first recording. In short time, their gospel recordings became so popular that after three western sessions, the decision was made to only record gospel music. In short time, the Chuck Wagon Gang's contract and master recordings were purchased by Columbia Records, now Sony Music. Their association with Columbia Records lasted thirty-nine years, during which time they recorded 408 known masters. At one time, the Chuck Wagon Gang was the second highest selling artist on the label, second to Xavier Cugat, and they were followed in sales by the newly rising star, Johnny Cash.

The group was quite content with their popular radio program, and on occasion did a few personal appearances in Texas and neighboring states. Promoter, the late Wally Fowler heard them on radio, and decided they were a must for his "All-Nite Singings" which were becoming very popular in the South. Traveling to Texas, his mission was to convince the Chuck Wagon Gang that folks outside Texas were ready for live concerts at his programs. The group was very reluctant for these far travels, but finally booked two dates with him, Augusta and Atlanta, GA.

Much to the Gang's surprise, thousands of very enthusiastic folks were on hand to greet them at both cities. Except for brief interruptions during World War II, their radio shows lasted 15 years, but their career was mounting for full concert work, where their travels would eventually take them to the famed Carnegie Hall in New York City, Hollywood Bowl, Gator Bowl, Daytona International Speedway, numerous appearances on The Grand Ole Opry, and international travels to Canada, and Nassau and Spanish Wells in The Bahamas.

The Gang's popularity was greatly enhanced by radio play. One could hardly move the radio dial without hearing them. Many locally sponsored 15-30 minute daily radio programs, playing only Chuck Wagon Gang music, sprouted across the nation. In the 1950s, promoters Rev. and Mrs. J. Bazzel Mull of Knoxville, TN began playing their music exclusively weekly on large 50,000-watt stations in Nashville, Chicago, New Orleans, and other large cities. Turning to television in the early 60s, they made a number of black and white video clips for The Wally Fowler Show and The Mull's Singing Convention. The Chuck Wagon Gang also co-hosted a TV Show with The Rangers Trio, The Gospel Roundup, a fifteen-minute Monday-Friday show, featuring two songs by each group. This program was aired and rerun for approximately five years. They made numerous guest appearances on several country music shows, including The Wilburn Brothers and Porter Wagoner, as well as an appearance on the Gospel Singing Jubilee.

The Chuck Wagon Gang remained essentially a family group through the years. As family members retired or left the group, other family members as well as non-family members came in to the group. This is not a lot of people, considering the longevity of the group. Each edition has remained a close-harmony quartet, and contributed to the onward success of the Chuck Wagon Gang.

Through the years many awards and accolades have been bestowed upon the group. In 1950, Billboard reported that disc jockeys of America voted the Chuck Wagon Gang eighteenth most popular of all small singing groups in the nation, considering all genres of music, and third most popular of all Columbia Recording artists. In 1955 Columbia Records awarded them their first gold record for "I'll Shout and Shine," commemorating 20 years on Columbia Records. Also in 1955, the National Disc Jockey Association voted them "Number One Gospel Act in America." They were named "Kentucky Colonels" in the mid-sixties. In 1966 The Chuck Wagon Gang was chosen with several other artists to appear in a movie, Sing a Song for Heaven's Sake. Columbia Records also presented a 30-year plaque in 1967. Dad Carter was posthumously inducted into the Gospel Music Association's Hall Of Fame in Nashville on April 3, 1985. On November 28, 1986, performance rights organization SESAC presented the Gang's second gold record "to commemorate 50 years of recorded music, an unparalleled milestone in Gospel Music." "The Lifetime Achievement Award" was awarded in 1986 by SESAC. In 1989 Rose Karnes was presented "The Living Legend Award" by The Grand Ole Gospel Reunion, followed by her sister, Anna, receiving the same award in 1990. In 1989, at the National Quartet Convention in Nashville, Roy Carter was presented the coveted "Marvin Norcross Award," the highest honor given in the gospel music field. The Chuck Wagon Gang garnered "Gospel Group of The Year" by TNN/Music City News Awards for the years 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, and 1993. The group was nominated for a Grammy Award in 1992 for their album, "Still Rollin'," placing in the top five of their category. In 1998 all past and former members of the Gang were inducted into the Gospel Music Association's Hall of Fame in Nashville, TN. In 2006, Shaye Smith was made a "Kentucky Colonel." On June 14, 2006, President Bush sent White House greetings in honor of the Chuck Wagon Gang's 70th Anniversary. In October 2005, Anna Carter Gordon Davis was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Association's Hall of Fame in Pigeon Forge, TN. Anna was followed by her sister, Rose Carter Karnes for the same induction in October 2006. Their recordings are among the historic recordings at both the White House and The Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. On August 13, 2010, Charles Waller and The Grand Ole Gospel Reunion in Greenville, SC, honored the group for a plaque in commemoration of 75 years of recording. On September 28, 2011, the late Roy Carter, long-time mainstay bass singer was inducted into the Southern Gospel Music Association's Hall of Fame in Pigeon Forge, TN.