Of Bluegrass and Barbers

Wherever else but in Bristol, Virginia, the birthplace of nation songs, would you discover a fiddling barber? Wherever else would you locate a barber often featured in Jim Scancarelli's comic strip "Gasoline Alley"? In what other barber store in The us can you find a barber with about 50 years' expertise in each reducing hair and making bluegrass music?

Every single Thursday early morning, a group of some of the most proficient musicians this facet of Nashville assemble amid the Vitalis, Osage Rub, and Pinaud Clubman Talc to give Star Barber Shop patrons a free of charge concert. They even take requests.

Gene Boyd started the Star Barber Store organization in 1950, and his romantic relationship with music goes back even farther. He began taking part in bluegrass about age ten and performed with such local groups as the Holston Valley Gang, the Boys from Hickory Tree and Leon Kiser and the Holston Mountain Boys. Mr. Boyd has done with Bill Monroe, Jim and Jessee and RoniStoneman. Fellow Bristolian Ernie Ford was a disc jockey when Mr. Boyd played bluegrass on the radio. Mr. Boyd was awarded a BCMA Lifetime Achievement Award by the Birthplace of Country Audio Alliance in 1998. He also seems in an English film organization video clip titled "Crawdaddy-from Bristol to Bristol."

Music provides a powerful bond between the musicians who frequent the Star Barber Shop and their people. On the Thursday morning that I visited the shop, 1 guitar player's daughter had accompanied him to the store and proudly declared to me, "That's my daddy!"

One more Star Barber Store regular player showed me a guitar that had been handmade by his son. The guitar featured superbly inlaid tiny mosaic tiles all around the base and down the neck.

"Does he do that for a living?" I asked.

The guy laughed. "Nah. He operates at Eastman."

Mr. Boyd's very own fiddle is a pretty piece of his own craftsmanship. The only location some of the cherry endhas worn skinny is where Mr. Boyd's left hand holds the neck. This is a fiddle that has been played typically and with a fantastic deal of love and respect for the instrument and for the music it emits.

If you are ever in Bristol, Virginia, on a Thursday early morning, go by the Star Barber Store at 1003 West State Street. You'll be welcomed with a cup of coffee, a song, and a haircut, if you want a single.

Every person Welcome...Except Possibly Large Maude

You may possibly feel that Floyd's Town Barber Shop with its homespun allure and "two chairs, no waiting" exists only in The Andy Griffith Show reruns. Soon after all, who can run a productive organization and nevertheless get time to shoot the breeze with passersby? Nicely, don't inform any person that you heard it from me, but Russell Hiatt can.

Want a great haircut and all the newest gossip about the fine individuals from Mayberry? Then stop in at Floyd's City Barber Store on Primary Street inAndy Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina. I did. I didn't get a haircut, but I did get a handful of intriguing tales. Now, here again, you didn't hear any of this from me, but Andy just lately arrived home to dedicate a stretch of road named in his honor. It's formally known as The Andy Griffith Parkway, but some people are by now calling it "Andy's Street." They're not actually ones to set on the puppy in Mayberry, you know...er, I mean, Mount Airy. And you know Hal Smith who played Otis the city drunk on the demonstrate? He confessed to Mr. Hiatt that he'd never drank in his everyday life. And Ernest T. Bass? He isn't a nutty small troublemaker at all. He's a genuinely nice man named Howard Morris who has visited Floyd's Town Barber Shop a amount of times. Helen Crump (a/k/a Aneta Corsaut) arrived for a visit when and brought along about 500 individuals from a tour in Winston-Salem. That check out supplied the inspiration for Mr. Hiatt's "Wall of Fame."

It was about fourteen years ago that Ms. Crump compensated that pay a visit to. Because then, Mr. Hiatt has put 23,000 pictures on his wall (and has yet another one,800 prepared to be positioned, even though obtaining 1,800 empty spaces may pose a difficulty). These images incorporate each day people (like me), a Cleveland, Ohio woman (who was the first to be photographed for the "Wall of Fame"), governors, major league ballplayers and officials, Oprah Winfrey (whose father Vernon is a barber in Nashville, Tennessee), and even "The Incredible Hulk" Lou Ferrigno.

"Now that a single fills up a barber chair," observes Mr. Hiatt, pointing out the picture of Lou Ferrigno.

It is correct. I'll wager even Aunt Bee and Clara peeped about the corner from Snappy Lunch in purchase to get a better appear at the muscle-bound, smiling actor.

Mr. Hiatt has had a great deal of enjoyable above the past 56 many years becoming "Floyd the barber." Who'd have thought that cutting Andy Griffith's hair when Andy was in college would play such a role in shaping Mr. Hiatt's lifestyle? Howard McNear who played Floyd Lawson on The Andy Griffith Display suffered a stroke in the show's very last yr, 1968. Mr. McNear died on January 3, 1969. Hence, the genuine existence "Floyd" attends Mayberry's reunions and celebrations. When he will get back house, he when yet again will get out the scissors and the comb and goes back again to perform.

I have to say, Russell Hiatt is a actual Mayberry kind of man. He faithfully visits his mother-now 98-in the nursing house and each and every other Sunday, he aids cook dinner for the entire family members (23 in all). And significantly like Floyd Lawson, you can't a single-up him no matter how challenging you try out. I showed him images of my boy-woman twins, and danged if he didn't flip correct about and stage out a photograph of his boy-woman twins (just two of his ten fantastic-grandchildren).

In 2000, Mr. Hiatt was inducted into the Barbering Hall of Fame. "If I'd retired, I'd have missed that," he informed me. "And if I'd stayed home right now, I'd have missed you...and I wouldn't have missed that for the globe."

That mentioned, contemplate yourself warned about browsing Mount Airy/Mayberry. We watch The Andy Griffith Present, and we get preconceived notions about what these townspeople may well be like. Then you go there and find that it's truly much better than anything Hollywood could concoct. You go to the Visitor's Center and Ann and Millie make you experience like a VIP, and then Mr. Hiatt treats you like loved ones. I was nearly stunned that no deputy stopped me on the way out of town to give me a jar of pickles...but then yet again, an individual did point out that that specific deputy was mostly on duty on Fridays.

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