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Purple blooms atop the Joe Pye weed along roadsides tell me it’s August, the season for hot weather, thunderstorms and the big Georgia Mountain Fair celebration in Hiawassee. They had it last week, but somehow we didn’t get around to attending.
Thursday, always Bluegrass Day, would have been a good day to go. Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver were scheduled, saw them once in the past when Doyle was working in a new banjo player, who was from nearby Gilmer County and had brought his own sizeable cheering section.
We started attending with our kids in early 1970s, when the music events were held in a huge rented tent set up on the school playground. I especially remember hearing the Wilburn Brothers and Jack Green.
And a champion fiddle player from Union County, whose attractive companion was drawing compliments. That’s a good-looking woman you got there, one said.
“Well, you might not have noticed,” the fiddler said. “But I ain’t no slouch myself.”
Organ-grinder & monkey
Always was a family style show, and we took ours on every August. They each had a little spending money.
When we climbed the hill toward the big tent, we met a musician who did not pick and sing. It was an old-timey organ man with a monkey who collected the coins, usually one at a time.
Our youngest boy was trusting, held out his open palm with all his change in it, probably a couple of dollars worth. Monkey looked twice and then cleaned it off.
Onlookers laughed, son was confused, organ man played several songs for him, and I resupplied him with all my change.
It always rains on the fair, and I still remember coming home one night in bell-bottom jeans popular in the 1970s, snow-white until the red-clay Georgia mud branded them permanently.
Local string band
Then the fair got its own piece of land on the lake, with the big Anderson Music Hall, where we saw big Nashville, Tenn., acts like Ricky Skaggs, Gene Watson, the Everly Brothers, Waylon Jennings and all the rest. Sometimes part of fair week, sometimes in stand-alone concerts throughout the year, which still continues today.
There was a secondary stage for the local bands, and we got to perform there one year. I was playing in a Brasstown bluegrass outfit, Carl Green’s Homesteaders. And it was August hot.
We were told to play three short sets – at 2, at 4 and at 6 o’clock. Normally some of our spectators would get up and buck dance when we hit on a fast one. But it was so hot that afternoon the only dancing we inspired was at the last set, when it had cooled off a little.
Backstage interview
Went to the fair once on a press pass to interview country comedian Jerry Clower in a dressing room at the music hall.
Turned out whether there are 1,000 people in the room or just one person he delivers the same show.
Country as cornbread, Jerry in a few minutes was telling me funny stories, bear-hugging me around the shoulders and howling with laughter.
His classic stock are coon-hunting tales – “Knock him out, John”–and I got to hear some from the master himself. A TV crew had come to Mississippi to film one, and Jerry did a killer imitation of a French-speaking television producer directing filming of “the coon … the coon.”
Mountain Fair memories make me want to sit down and eat a whole stack of delicious, nutritious funnel cakes …
Wally Avett first wrote for the Cherokee Scout as editor in 1969. His books are available as signed copies at the Scout office in Murphy. Call him at 837-5531 or email wallyavett@gmail.com.