News Release

Local angles: Buies Creek, Durham,
Winston-Salem; Nashville, Tenn.

Photo: To download photos, see end of story.

Music legends to share stories,
songs, more on Feb. 27 at UNC

CHAPEL HILL – Two legends in country and pop music will discuss their lives and adventures in the entertainment business on Feb. 27 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

George Hamilton IV, the first performer to take country music behind the Iron Curtain, and songwriter John D. Loudermilk, whose tunes have been recorded by singers ranging from Porter Wagoner to Norah Jones, will speak from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in Hill Hall Auditorium.

They will take questions from the audience, including 275 UNC students from the course “Introduction to Country Music.” Some of their answers may be in song. Both will take the stage with guitars in hand.

The free public program will celebrate their donation of concert memorabilia, sound and video recordings, news clippings, correspondence and more, dating from the 1950s to the 1990s, to the Southern Folklife Collection in UNC’s Wilson Library.

“Their personal papers richly document their careers as well as the change in country music during that time period,” said Steve Weiss, head of the collection. He expects the materials to be available to the public sometime this fall.

UNC music professor and country music scholar Jocelyn Neal will begin the Feb. 27 program with such questions as “Could you give us a taste of the music you were playing in the late 1950s when your careers started to take off?”

Both set sail in 1956, when Hamilton scored his first big hit with Loudermilk’s “A Rose and a Baby Ruth.” A Winston-Salem native, Hamilton had enrolled in UNC in fall 1955, but the record took him from school to stardom.

Loudermilk, born in Durham, grew up with the Salvation Army, where his parents worked. There he learned to play multiple instruments. When he sang “Baby Ruth” on Durham station WTVD, the late Orville Campbell was watching. Campbell, publisher of The Chapel Hill Newspaper (now, The Chapel Hill News), arranged to have Hamilton record it on Colonial Records of Chapel Hill.

Loudermilk also spent a year in college, 1956-1957 at Campbell University in Buies Creek, but he soon headed for the footlights, too. Today the two musicians remain active in the music business, living just outside Nashville, Tenn.

Billboard magazine coined Hamilton’s unofficial title as the international ambassador of country music. He was the first to take the genre behind the Iron Curtain, in 1974, and hosted numerous BBC television and radio shows. He also performed in Africa, New Zealand, the Middle East and many other locations abroad; he hosted a national TV show in Canada in the 1970s.

The Grand Ole Opry, where he performs regularly, made Hamilton a member more than 40 years ago, an honor for career success. His Top 10 country singles included “If You Don't Know I Ain’t Gonna Tell You” and Loudermilk’s “Break My Mind.” “Abilene” (1963) topped the country charts for four weeks and hit No. 15 on the pop charts.

Hamilton toured with Johnny Cash, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and other artists; he hosted TV series on CBS and ABC in the 1950s.

Loudermilk recorded some of the songs he wrote, including “Tobacco Road,” part of a collection of 15 that became a Gold Record. But he made his mark in songwriting. The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted him in 1976.

His rock, rockabilly, blues, country and pop tunes were recorded by artists including the Everly Brothers, Chet Atkins, Johnny Cash and Marianne Faithfull. Jones’ 2002 album “Come Away with Me” included her version of Loudermilk’s “Turn Me On.” The album won eight Grammy Awards.

A 1960 song that Loudermilk titled “The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian” became the No. 1 hit “Indian Reservation” for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1971. Country headliner Tim McGraw excerpted the song in his 1994 hit “Indian Outlaw.”

Neal said the two artists’ materials are critical for scholarship and research.

“Their oral histories and documentation of their careers is a treasure trove for anyone trying to explore the history or culture of this music,” she said. “It’s a way of opening a window into a history that might otherwise be lost.”

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Photo URLs: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/Hamilton.JPG
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/Hamilton2006.JPG
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/P2869_GeorgeHamiltonIV.jpg
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/LoudermilkRecentGuitar.JPG
http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/visiting/P2900_JohnDLoudermilk.jpg

Note: For more information about Hamilton, visit http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&searchlink=GEORGE|HAMILTON|IV&sql=11:4jmsa9rgb238~T1;  For more on Loudermilk, visit http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:2f8uak2k5m3p

Library contacts: Steve Weiss, (919) 962-1345, smweiss@email.unc.edu; Judy Panitch, (919) 962-1301, panitch@email.unc.edu
Music department contact: Jocelyn Neal, (919) 962-1039, jneal@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589