Where else however in Bristol, Virginia, the particular birthplace of region music, would you find a fiddling barber? Where else would certainly you look for a barber often featured throughout Jim Scancarelli’s comic strip “Gasoline Alley”? In what some other barber shop in the usa can you find a barber along with over 50 years’ experience both in reducing hair and generating bluegrass music?

Each Thursday morning, a new group of several of the almost all talented musicians this specific side of Nashville gather amid the particular Vitalis, Osage Rub, and Pinaud Clubman Talc to provide Star Barber Store patrons a free display. They even get requests.

Gene Boyd began the Legend Barber Shop business in 1950, and even his relationship together with music goes back again even farther. This individual began playing bluegrass around age 10 and performed using such local groupings as the Holston Valley Gang, typically the Boys from Hickory Tree and Leon Kiser and typically the Holston Mountain Boys. Mr. Boyd offers performed with Bill Monroe, Jim and even Jessee and Roni Stoneman. Fellow Bristolian Ernie Ford seemed to be a disc jockey when Mr. Boyd played bluegrass on the radio. Mr. Boyd was awarded a BCMA Lifetime Achievement Award from the Birthplace of Nation Music Alliance over 10 years ago. He also shows up in an English film company video titled “Crawdaddy-from Bristol to Bristol. inches

Music provides a strong bond in between the musicians which frequent the Star Barber Shop and their families. On the particular Thursday morning that will I visited typically the shop, one any guitar player’s daughter had accompanied him to the shop and proudly declared to my opinion, “That’s my father! “

Another Celebrity Barber Shop standard player showed us a guitar that had been handmade simply by his son. The guitar featured attractively inlaid tiny variety tiles around the base and down the neck.

“Does he achieve that for a living? very well I asked.

Typically the man laughed. “Nah. He works with Eastman. inches

Mister. Boyd’s own mess is a lovely piece of his / her own craftsmanship. Typically the only place a number of the cherry finish offers worn thin is how Mr. Boyd’s left hand holds the neck of the guitar. This is the fiddle which has been played often and with a great deal involving love and respect for the instrument and for typically the music it produces.

If you’re actually in Bristol, Va, on a Thursday night morning, go simply by the Star Damefris?r Shop at 1003 West State Avenue. You’ll be welcome with a mug of coffee, a new song, and a new haircut, if a person want one.

Every person Welcome… Except Probably Big Maude

You could think that Floyd’s Town Barber Shop having its homespun charm in addition to “two chairs, zero waiting” exists just in The Andy Griffith Show reruns. In the end, who may run an effective business and even now take time to shoot the breeze with passersby? Well, don’t explain to anyone that you noticed it from myself, but Russell Hiatt can.

Want some sort of good haircut and all the newest gossip about the fine folks from Mayberry? Then stop in at Floyd’s City Barber Store on Main Streets in Andy Griffith’s hometown of Support Airy, North Carolina. I did so. I didn’t have a haircut, although I did so get the few interesting stories. Now, here again, you didn’t hear any of this specific from me, but Andy recently arrived home to dedicate a stretch regarding road named found in his honor. Is actually officially the Andy Griffith Parkway, nevertheless some people will be already calling that “Andy’s Road. ” They’re definitely not kinds to put upon the dog in Mayberry, you realize… er, We mean, Mount Cut. And you find out Hal Smith that played Otis the town drunk on the particular show? He confessed to Mr. Hiatt that he’d in no way drank in the existence. And Ernest To. Bass? He isn’t a nutty very little troublemaker at almost all. He’s a genuinely nice guy known as Howard Morris which has visited Floyd’s City Barber Go shopping a number associated with times. Helen Crump (a/k/an Aneta Corsaut) came for an appointment once and produced along about five hundred people from some sort of tour in Winston-Salem. That visit supplied the inspiration intended for Mr. Hiatt’s “Wall of Fame. inches

It absolutely was about 18 years back that Ms. Crump paid that will visit. Since then, Mr. Barbier à domicile put 23, 500 photographs on his wall membrane (and has one other 1, 800 geared up to be put, though finding just one, 800 empty rooms might pose a new problem). These photos include everyday individuals (like me), a new Cleveland, Ohio lady (who was typically the first to get took pictures of for the “Wall of Fame”), governors, major league ballplayers and officials, Oprah Winfrey (whose father Vernon is a barber in Nashville, Tennessee), and in many cases “The Incredible Hulk” Lou Energico.

“Now that one particular fills up a new barber chair, inch observes Mr. Hiatt, pointing out the particular photo of Lou Ferrigno.

It’s correct. I’ll bet even Aunt Bee in addition to Clara peeped nearby from Snappy Lunch in order in order to get a far better look at the muscle-bound, smiling actor.

Mr. Hiatt has already established a lot of fun over the past 56 years being “Floyd the barber. ” Who’d have thought that all cutting Andy Griffith’s hair when Andy was in college would play such a role found in shaping Mr. Hiatt’s life? Howard McNear who played Floyd Lawson within the Andy Griffith Show experienced a stroke found in the show’s last year, 1968. Mr. McNear died on January 3, 1969. Hence, the real lifestyle “Floyd” attends Mayberry’s reunions and get-togethers. When he gets again home, he when again gets your scissors and the comb and goes back to work.

We have to say, Russell Hiatt is definitely a real Mayberry kind of guy. He faithfully trips his mother-now 98-in the nursing house; each other Weekend, he helps prepare dinner for the whole family (23 in all). And much love Floyd Lawson, you may not one-up him regardless of hard you try out. I showed your pet photographs of our boy-girl twins, and even danged if this individual didn’t turn right around and point out an image involving his boy-girl baby twins (just two of the ten great-grandchildren).

In 2000, Mr. Hiatt was inducted in to the Barbering Legendary book. “If I’d launched onto, I’d have skipped that, ” they told me. “And if I’d stayed home today, I’d have missed an individual… and i also wouldn’t possess missed that with regard to the world. inches