Continued from Page 18 original Cowboys who’ll be playing at the festival this year. He explains what it was like to make music with Williams: “I was 17 when I met him in Montgomery,” Moultrie says. “After watching me play with another band, he offered me a job in his band, which I instantly accepted. I lived for a time in his mother’s boarding house, and he was like a brother to me. The time I spent with him had a major impact on my music and my life.” Moultrie, who now lives in Florida, enjoys coming back to Alabama each year to take part in the festival. “There are loads of people that like to see me and all the other musicians perform,” he says. “I imagine Hank would like the fact that there is a festival in his name. He always liked things like that.” In addition to Moultrie, the 2011 festival will include a line up of Grand Ole Opry stars performing
together, including Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, David Frizzell, Razzy Bailey and Jimmy Fortune. The “mini Opry” show hosted by Willams’ daughter, Jett Williams, will be taped and broadcast on the Ernest Tubb Midnight Jamboree radio show, the second oldest running radio show in the country that’s heard on Nashville’s WSM station right after the Grand Ole Opry. Other entertainers for the weekend include Starla Jones, Mary McDonald, Frank Brannon, Frank Tums, Slim Pickens, Jackson Capps and many more.d
Former caboose is now festival office
Alabama Living | MAY 2011 |
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