Of Bluegrass and Barbers
Wherever else but in Bristol, Virginia, the birthplace of nation audio, would you discover a fiddling barber? In which else would you locate a barber usually featured in Jim Scancarelli’s comic strip “Gasoline Alley”? In what other barber shop in The us can you find a barber with over 50 years’ experience in the two reducing hair and making bluegrass music?
Every Thursday morning, a group of some of the most talented musicians this aspect of Nashville gather amid the Vitalis, Osage Rub, and Pinaud Clubman Talc to give Star Barber Store patrons a free concert. They even consider requests.
Gene Boyd started the Star Barber Shop company in 1950, and his relationship with music goes again even farther. He began enjoying bluegrass around age ten and performed with these kinds of nearby groups as the Holston Valley Gang, the Boys from Hickory Tree and Leon Kiser and the Holston Mountain Boys. Mr. Boyd has performed with Bill Monroe, Jim and Jessee and Roni Stoneman. 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 Music Alliance in 1998. He also appears in an English movie company video titled “Crawdaddy-from Bristol to Bristol.”
Songs offers a strong bond amongst the musicians who frequent the Star Barber Store and their families. On the Thursday morning that I visited the store, one particular guitar player’s daughter had accompanied him to the store and proudly declared to me, “That is my daddy!”
One more Star Barber Store typical player showed me a guitar that had been handmade by his son. The guitar featured fantastically 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 performs at Eastman.”
Mr. Boyd’s own fiddle is a beautiful piece of his own craftsmanship. The only location some of the cherry end has wornthin is wherever Mr. Boyd’s left hand retains the neck. This is a fiddle that has been played frequently and with a excellent offer of love and respect for the instrument and for the music it emits.
If you’re 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 tune, and a haircut, if you want 1.
Every person Welcome…Except Maybe Huge Maude
You might think that Floyd’s City Barber Shop with its homespun allure and “two chairs, no waiting” exists only in The Andy Griffith Present reruns. Soon after all, who can run a successful organization and nevertheless consider time to shoot the breeze with passersby? Effectively, don’t inform everyone that you heard it from me, but Russell Hiatt can.
Want a excellent haircut and all the newest gossip about the good folks from Mayberry? Then cease in at Floyd’s Metropolis Barber Shop on Main Street in Andy Griffith’s hometown of Mount Airy, North Carolina. I did. I didn’t get a haircut, but I did get a couple of fascinating tales. Now, right here yet again, you didn’t hear any of this from me, but Andy recently came residence to dedicate a stretch of road named in his honor. It is formally named The Andy Griffith Parkway, but some men and women are by now calling it “Andy’s Road.” They’re not actually ones to set on the canine in Mayberry, you know…er, I mean, Mount Airy. And you know Hal Smith who played Otis the town drunk on the demonstrate? He confessed to Mr. Hiatt that he’d never ever drank in his existence. And Ernest T. Bass? He is not a nutty small troublemaker at all. He’s a really wonderful guy named Howard Morris who has visited Floyd’s Metropolis Barber Store a quantity of times. Helen Crump (a/k/a Aneta Corsaut) arrived for a visit the moment and introduced along about 500 people from a tour in Winston-Salem. That pay a visit to offered the inspiration for Mr. Hiatt’s “Wall of Fame.”
It was about fourteen a long time ago that Ms. Crump compensated that check out. Because then, Mr. Hiatt has put 23,000 photographs on his wall (and has yet another one,800 ready to be positioned, although discovering 1,800 empty spaces may possibly pose a issue). These pictures incorporate everyday people (like me), a Cleveland, Ohio woman (who was the initial to be photographed for the “Wall of Fame”), governors, key league ballplayers and officials, Oprah Winfrey (whose father Vernon is a barber in Nashville, Tennessee), and even “The Extraordinary Hulk” Lou Ferrigno.
“Now that 1 fills up a barber chair,” observes Mr. Hiatt, pointing out the picture of Lou Ferrigno.
It’s correct. I’ll bet even Aunt Bee and Clara peeped close to the corner from Snappy Lunch in buy to get a far better glimpse at the muscle-bound, smiling actor.
Mr. Hiatt has had a whole lot of exciting about the past 56 a long time becoming “Floyd the barber.” Who’d havebelieved that cutting Andy Griffith’s hair when Andy was in school would play such a function in shaping Mr. Hiatt’s lifestyle? Howard McNear who played Floyd Lawson on The Andy Griffith Show suffered a stroke in the show’s previous yr, 1968. Mr. McNear died on January 3, 1969. Therefore, the actual life “Floyd” attends Mayberry’s reunions and celebrations. When he will get again property, he when once again gets 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 residence and every other Sunday, he aids cook dinner for the whole loved ones (23 in all). And much like Floyd Lawson, you cannot a single-up him no make any difference how difficult you check out. I showed him photographs of my boy-lady twins, and danged if he didn’t flip appropriate close to and level out a photograph of his boy-lady twins (just two of his ten great-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 house today, I’d have missed you…and I wouldn’t have missed that for the planet.”
That said, think about by yourself warned about traveling to Mount Airy/Mayberry. We observe The Andy Griffith Display, and we get preconceived notions about what these townspeople may well be like. Then you go there and discover that it’s genuinely greater than anything Hollywood could concoct. You go to the Visitor’s Center and Ann and Millie make you really feel like a VIP, and then Mr. Hiatt treats you like household. I was almost shocked that no deputy stopped me on the way out of city to give me a jar of pickles…but then once again, a person did point out that that certain deputy was largely on duty on Fridays.
