Where else however in Bristol, Virginia, typically the birthplace of country music, would an individual locate a fiddling boxer? Where else would certainly you look for a barber often featured in Jim Scancarelli’s comic strip “Gasoline Alley”? In what various other barber shop in America can you locate a barber together with over 50 years’ experience in the cutting hair and making bluegrass music?
Every single Thursday morning, the group of a few of the virtually all talented musicians this particular side of Nashville gather amid the Vitalis, Osage Rub, and Pinaud Clubman Talc to give Star Barber Go shopping patrons a free conjunction. They even acquire requests.
Gene Boyd began the Star Barber Shop company in 1950, and his relationship together with music goes again even farther. He or she began playing bluegrass around age 12 and performed together with such local groups as the Holston Valley Gang, typically the Boys from Hickory Tree and Leon Kiser and the particular Holston Mountain Boys. Mr. Boyd has performed with Bill Monroe, Jim plus Jessee and Roni Stoneman. Fellow Bristolian Ernie Ford has been a disc jinete when Mr. Boyd played bluegrass in the radio. Mister. Boyd was awarded a BCMA Lifetime Achievement Award by Birthplace of Region Music Alliance over 10 years ago. He also shows up in an British film company movie titled “Crawdaddy-from Bristol to Bristol. very well
Music provides some sort of strong bond among the musicians that frequent the Celebrity Barber Shop and their families. On the particular Thursday morning of which I visited the shop, one acoustic guitar player’s daughter experienced accompanied him in order to the shop plus proudly declared in my experience, “That’s my father! “
Another Star Barber Shop regular player showed me a guitar that got been handmade by his son. barbers cut featured superbly inlaid tiny mosaic tiles around typically the base and along the neck.
“Does he achieve that regarding a living? ” I asked.
The particular man laughed. “Nah. He works from Eastman. “
Mr. Boyd’s own fiddle is an attractive piece of the own craftsmanship. The particular only place a few of the cherry finish has worn thin is how Mr. Boyd’s left holds the the neck and throat. This is a new fiddle that is performed often sufficient reason for a great deal regarding love and value for the device and for the particular music it gives off.
If you’re ever before in Bristol, Va, on a Thurs night morning, go by simply the Star Barber Shop at 1003 West State Road. You’ll be made welcome with a mug of coffee, a song, and a haircut, if you want one.
Everybody Welcome… Except Maybe Big Maude
You may think that Floyd’s Metropolis Barber Shop having its homespun charm in addition to “two chairs, not any waiting” exists only in The Andy Griffith Show reruns. After all, who could run a successful business and even now take the time to shoot the particular breeze with passersby? Well, don’t explain to anyone who you heard it from myself, but Russell Hiatt can.
Want a good haircut and all the latest gossip about the particular fine folks by Mayberry? Then cease in at Floyd’s City Barber Go shopping on Main Avenue in Andy Griffith’s hometown of Support Airy, North Carolina. Used to do. I don’t get yourself a haircut, yet I did get a new few interesting testimonies. Now, here once more, you didn’t hear any of this kind of from me, but Andy recently came home to dedicate a stretch of road named found in his honor. It can officially called The Andy Griffith Parkway, but some people are already calling this “Andy’s Road. inches They’re not really ones to put about your dog in Mayberry, you realize… er, My partner and i mean, Mount Airy. And you find out Hal Smith which played Otis this town drunk on the show? He confessed to Mr. Hiatt that he’d in no way drank in the life. And Ernest Capital t. Bass? He basically a nutty small troublemaker at almost all. He’s a definitely nice guy called Howard Morris that has visited Floyd’s City Barber Shop a number regarding times. Helen Crump (a/k/an Aneta Corsaut) came for a visit once and delivered along about five-hundred people from the tour in Winston-Salem. That visit offered the inspiration regarding Mr. Hiatt’s “Wall of Fame. very well
It absolutely was about 18 yrs ago that Master of science. Crump paid that will visit. Since then simply, Mr. Hiatt provides put 23, 500 photographs in the walls (and has another 1, 800 set to be positioned, though finding one, 800 empty spaces might pose a problem). These photographs include everyday folks (like me), the Cleveland, Ohio woman (who was typically the first being took pictures of for the “Wall of Fame”), governors, major league ballplayers and officials, Oprah (whose father Vernon is a barber in Nashville, Tennessee), as well as “The Incredible Hulk” Lou Energico.
“Now that a single fills up a barber chair, ” observes Mr. Hiatt, pointing out the particular photo of Lou Ferrigno.
It’s genuine. I’ll bet still Aunt Bee and Clara peeped nearby from Snappy Lunch time in order to be able to get a better look at the muscle-bound, smiling actor.
Mr. Hiatt has had a great deal of fun more than the past 56 years being “Floyd the barber. inch Who’d have thought that cutting Andy Griffith’s hair when Andy was in college would play these kinds of a role inside shaping Mr. Hiatt’s life? Howard McNear who played Floyd Lawson for the Andy Griffith Show suffered a stroke inside of the show’s recently, 1968. Mr. McNear died on Present cards 3, 1969. As a result, the real existence “Floyd” attends Mayberry’s reunions and activities. If he gets back again home, he once again gets out your scissors and the particular comb and goes back to work.
I actually have to say, Russell Hiatt is a real Mayberry kind of person. He faithfully sessions his mother-now 98-in the nursing home; every other Weekend, he helps prepare food dinner for the whole family (23 in all). And much want Floyd Lawson, on the phone to one-up him regardless of hard you try. I showed him or her photographs of our boy-girl twins, in addition to danged if they didn’t turn appropriate around and point out an image associated with his boy-girl twin babies (just a pair of his ten great-grandchildren).
Inside 2000, Mr. Hiatt was inducted in to the Barbering Legendary book. “If I’d retired, I’d have overlooked that, ” this individual told me. “And if I’d stayed at home today, I’d personally have missed an individual… and I wouldn’t have missed that for the world. inches