GEORGE HAMILTON IV

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Ich war mir sicher, dass George Hamilton IV nicht mehr lebt, allerdings ist dieser Thread offensichtlich diesbezüglich nicht aktualisiert worden, so wie wir das sonst kennen. Darum poste ich hier einen faktisch recht versierten und interessanten Nachruf auf diesen Ausnahmekünstler, der seinen musikalischen Durchbruch auch seinem Freund John D. Loudermilk verdankt. Dieser Nachruf wurde vom Guardian veröffentlicht.

Seine beiden "Rockabilly" Titel verstehe ich allerdings eher als ein augenzwinkerndes "Drüber-lustig-machen" über diesen Hype, den ein wildgewordener Truckdriver aus Tupelo, Mississippi da ins Rollen gebracht hatte. Etwas ähnliches gab es ja auch auf Decca: "Alligator Come Across". Dort heisst es, man wird sich in ein paar Jahren fragen, wo sind diese Cats bloss geblieben, während es weiterhin schöne und artige Countrymusik geben wird...

George Hege Hamilton IV, singer, born 19 July 1937; died 17 September 2014

The growth of a considerable and loyal following for American country music in Britain was due in no small way to the efforts of George Hamilton IV, the singer and international ambassador for the genre, who has died aged 77. From the late 1960s, Hamilton frequently toured the UK and Ireland, many times with local musicians. He was a regular performer at the Wembley international festival of country music.

His engaging manner and gentle vocal style made him the ideal presenter for several BBC television series in the 1970s, including George the Fourth – A King in the Country and George Hamilton IV and Other Folk. He said of his affinity with the British: "I get a big kick out of taking the music that originally had its roots in places like England and Ireland back to the descendants of its originators. It feels like I'm putting something back into my art form."

Hamilton was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and could trace his family line back to 1685, when an ancestor left Scotland for the new world. George Hamilton I was a farmer, and his son, Hamilton's grandfather, was a railroad worker who introduced his grandson to country music through the records of Jimmie Rodgers and the weekly Grand Ole Opry radio show. Young George also enjoyed visiting the cinema to see the films of the singing cowboys Gene Autry and Tex Ritter.

He grew up in a strict Moravian Baptist household with his father and mother, Mary Lilian, before beginning his studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There he discovered pop music and in 1956, aged 19, recorded John D Loudermilk's teenage ballad A Rose and a Baby Ruth, for a small record label in Washington DC. The song was given national distribution on the ABC Paramount label, eventually reaching number six in the national chart.

After achieving another top 10 hit with Why Don't They Understand (1958), Hamilton switched to country music, and recorded for RCA in Nashville under the tutelage of Chet Atkins. Between 1960 and 1978 he had 40 songs in the country music charts. The most successful were Before This Day Ends (1960) and Abilene (1963), also composed by Loudermilk and a number one hit. He joined the Grand Ole Opry, by now the most prestigious country music television show, in 1960.

In the mid-60s, Hamilton was attracted to the new breed of folk singer-songwriters emerging in New York and Toronto. He took a special interest in Canadian music, becoming the first to record a song by Joni Mitchell (Urge for Going, 1967) and taking such Gordon Lightfoot compositions as Early Morning Rain and Steel Rail Blues (both 1966) to a wide audience. This led to a number of series for Canadian television, which were syndicated internationally, including to ITV in Britain.

In the 1980s, Hamilton turned more and more to gospel music, undertaking tours of churches in the southern states and recording several gospel albums, the last of which, Old Fashioned Hymns, was issued in 2010. He devised special shows such as A Country Christmas (1988), a mixture of songs, poems and scripture readings. He often linked up with the evangelist Billy Graham, performing on Graham's crusades in the US and Britain.

Hamilton made his first trip to Britain in 1967 to appear on Wally Whyton's Country Meets Folk programme on BBC Radio 2; this was followed two years later by a performance at the first Wembley festival. He returned almost every year.

He toured with British country artists including the Stu Page Band, the Hillsiders and Tony Goodacre; Goodacre joined him in a show called A Hundred Years in Country Music, a reference to the fact that each singer was celebrating 50 years on stage.

In 1969, he was made honorary life president of the British Country Music Association.

In 1979, at the peak of the popularity of his television series, he became the first country singer to top the bill of a summer-season show, at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool.

In the 1990s, Hamilton acted as the narrator of a stage show in memory of Patsy Cline, the country star who died in a plane crash in 1963. This autumn, he was scheduled to tour a new version of that show with the Irish singer Sandy Kelly.

Hamilton took his music farther afield in 1974, when he was the first country star to give concerts in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia. He also appeared in Scandinavia, Australasia and Japan.

Unlike many of his fellow country musicians, he combined his southern Baptist faith with support for liberal causes. He was an activist for the civil rights movement and performed as a warm-up act for Robert Kennedy in the latter's ill-fated presidential campaign in 1968.

He is survived by his wife, Tinky; daughter, Mary; sons, Peyton and George V, who is also a singer and songwriter; and four grandchildren, including George Hamilton VI.

Hallo Dieter,

du bräuchtest garnicht so weit gehen, auch hier hab' ich einen Tag nach seinem Tod vermerkt, was
am Vortag passierte, siehe # 24.

Gruss Billy