Ramblin' Rhodes: Famed Fairfield Four launches music series

Web posted Thursday, March 4, 2004
By Don Rhodes. | Columnist

You have two choices if you want to see the gospel group The Fairfield Four:

You can rent or buy a copy of the hit movie O Brother, Where Are Thou? and see them as gravediggers singing Lonesome Valley, or you can catch the Grammy Award winners from Nashville, Tenn., in an increasingly rare public performance at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Imperial Theatre, 745 Broad St.

"We're too old to stay on the road too long," said Robert Hamlett, who has been with the group for 20 years. "We maybe get out of Nashville a couple of times a month, but we did go to Los Angeles a week ago to do two shows at the new Getty (art) Museum."

Mr. Hamlett celebrated his 73rd birthday on Wednesday, and another group member, Wilson Waters Jr., celebrates his 73rd birthday today. Other members are Isaac Freeman, the oldest (75), and Joe Rice, who is in his 30s. The newest member, James D. Fizer, 71, joined the group four years ago, upon the death of longtime member James Hill.

The Fairfield Four's performance will launch the Imperial's bluegrass and traditional gospel music series, presented in partnership with the Morris Museum of Art. The Paine College Concert Choir, led by Sandra Scott, opens. Tickets are $20. Call 722-8341 or order online at imperialtheatre.com.

Mr. Hamlett is looking forward to returning to Augusta after being here with The Fairfield Four a few years ago for a gospel concert at the Augusta-Richmond County Civic Center.

"We were on a flight into Augusta with Clarence Thomas, the (U.S.) Supreme Court justice," he recalled, "and we ended up talking with James Brown for a long time in the lobby of our hotel."

The group got its start in the basement of Fairfield Baptist Church in Nashville in 1921. Mr. Hamlett heard the gospel group for the first time 67 years ago.

"I was about 6 years old, and my grandfather took me to see them at the Fairfield Baptist Church in south Nashville," he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Hamlett was singing with a Nashville group called the Gospel Tones in 1984 when he was asked by Mr. Hill to join The Fairfield Four.

Because gospel music artists, until recently, earned little pay, Fairfield Four members worked day jobs for many years. Mr. Hamlett, for instance, worked for the United States Tobacco Co.in Nashville for 23 years before retiring as a shipping supervisor.

The group enjoyed a surge in popularity after Amy Grant heard them perform in a concert at the airport in Nashville in 1990. She invited them to a celebrity-studded cancer benefit on her Franklin, TN farm, where they were re-discovered by Jim Ed Norman, the president of Warner Bros. Records - Nashville division.

He signed them to a contract, and, two years later, The Fairfield Four released their first Warner Bros. album Standing in the Safety Zone, which earned a Grammy Award nomination.

In 1997, they released the powerhouse album I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray, which featured as guest artists rocker Elvis Costello, country singer Pam Tillis and Prairie Home Companion host Garrison Keillor.

The Fairfield Four at times sang in Grand Ole Opry House dressing rooms with the likes of Roy Acuff, Bill Monroe and Chet Atkins and performed on the Oak Ridge Boys' show for The Nashville Network.

Hollywood came calling, and they were signed for George Clooney's 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?

"We filmed it outside Los Angeles, and it was a lot of fun," Mr. Hamlett said. "Clooney and John Goodman were really nice to us. We thought it was just a one-shot chance for us to be in a movie, and that would be it."

It wasn't.

The country-bluegrass-gospel artists who recorded the soundtrack and appeared in the blockbuster hit movie were put on a national Oh Brother tour.

"We got a standing ovation in Carnegie Hall," Mr. Hamlett said, "but you know, we had been there on our own before."

Before the Oh Brother hoopla had died down, The Fairfield Four were on another hit album, Down From the Mountain: O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which launched another tour.

"It's been great," Mr. Hamlett said. "I'm sitting here talking with you looking at a bunch of my awards - two Grammys and a platinum album and some others - and I am grateful for it all.

"Our music has given us a lot of recognition, and it's taken me a lot of places I never could have afforded to go. And, it's even made us a little money."

DON RHODES HAS WRITTEN ABOUT COUNTRY MUSIC FOR 33 YEARS. HE CAN BE REACHED AT (706) 823-3214 OR AT DON.RHODES@MORRIS.COM.