Early’s 44 years of making music

John Early’s fingers are blurring as if creating a sandstorm against the strings of the flat-head acoustic guitar.

He’s playing at the breakneck pace that at some point characterizes almost every performance of bluegrass music. One goes as fast as one can.

Early has been doing this for 44 years with the Hickory Hill Bluegrass Band he helped form.

The Avinger native is the leader and energizer of the band. While the other players of the banjo, mandolin and string bass stand relaxed even while playing 90 miles an hour, Early is bobbing to and fro. His head is swaying. He smiles and frowns, steps in and out.

It is the guitar player who is driving Hickory Hill’s version of music. The typical audience in Linden’s Music City Texas Theater stirs with the rise and fall of emotion as they know the band on stage is playing on the edge.

What if a string breaks? The band will go on. And the band does make mistakes. Some finger runs aren’t completed, some lead exchanges aren’t smooth. Once recently, Early had to pause entirely, laughing because he’d forgotten the words.

The audience laughed, too, and relaxed. They waited as the banjo player prompted the guitar player, and then it was off and running again.

In the end, the music was exciting and not because of strobe lighting or reverberated sound. It’s acoustic music with power and audience appeal.

The occasion has been the twice-yearly music event at Music City Texas Theater where Early is a founding member of the Hickory Hill Band. Three others join Early as original members and are Ronny Singley on mandolin, Bob Stegall on bass and Don Eaves on banjo. Richard Bowden on guitar and Milo Deering on fiddle and dobro have more recently joined the group.

The group is from all over the state. Early is from Avinger nd Bowden from Linden. Hickory Hill for more than a decade has been contracted to appear here twice yearly, the only band so scheduled. They play the third weekend of each February and August.

Each performance is a like a homecoming, The band does get together at other times to practice for a new album of music. They have now released their 10th title. But this is all that’s needed. These musicians are that good. It’s why their Linden performances are so spontaneous.

Early tells the success of Hickory Hill comes from the friendship the members have for each other, their approach to music as a hobby and the love they have to share with others. Hickory Hill is yet another of Cass County’s contributions to music.

The band began in 1979 some years after Early and next-door neighbor Roland Foster of Avinger became interested in music while in junior high.

“We were going over to hear the Four Speeds in Linden and others in those days,” Early tells. “We’d go to the legion hall dances, watch and listen to performers like Freddie Neese, the guitar player for the Four Speeds, and come home and remember what we’d saw.”

Early had a lot of Linden connections. He spent his summers in Linden with his grandparents Joe and Cleo Early. One other grandmother was Benny Ford of Benny’s Dress Shoppe in Linden. His parents Billye and H.G. “Boots” Early had been reared in Linden.

Early graduated and moved to Tyler to go to the junior college there. There he met Jimmy Godwin and put together a band called Pecos which had an eightyear run of performing.

Early said he might have tried to make a career of the music but in 1977 decided to go to work for the U. S. Post Service as a rural letter carrier. He would keep music as his hobby. Then, in 1979, the Hickory Hill band was formed.

All of Early’s outgoing enthusiasm and stage presence he said he got from Roland Foster who died early in 1994.

“Roland was a natural frontman, master comedian and showman,” Early said. “He was also a great friend and songwriter.” However, for some reason, it seems Early is just as natural as a leader. He lets others shine.

“I just love to play, and it’s most always been as the lead. That way I can kinda sit back, play rhythm and watch those other real good musicians play,” he says modestly.

And those musicians do perform. The way Hickory Hill performs bluegrass is described by Early as “folk music in over-drive, somewhere between country and bluegrass.” The band might be called “kings of Texas folk-grass” which is one of their album titles.

“Timing and speed is a major part of bluegrass. If you go to a festival, six of the eight bands there will play something of rip-roaring speed.’

Some part of the band’s enthusiasm may be due to the historic nature of the Music City Theater itself. It’s a small venue of some 400 seats with excellent acoustics and a friendly way of treating guests and stars who drop by.

“Being this small and close, it sort of puts the audience in the middle of your music. When that happens, you sort of make the best of it, and it brings out the best in you,” Early said.

“We treat the stars and everyone like they are at home here,” he said.

“That’s what we set out to do in the beginning with this music center in Cass County.”

He adds that he doesn’t see an end to Hickory Hill. He will, he said, continue playing as long as he can play well.

By that, he means lightning fast. Almost every time during a performance, Early will appear to be astounded at the musical abilities of his band members.

“I used to could play that fast,” he will say to the delight of the audience.