Friday, June 21, 2024
@
6:00 pm
–
8:00 pm
Come see Earl Hughes and the “Idaho Opry Stars” at City Park!
Earl has been the appointed “Ambassador of Country Music” by Alaska Governors Sean Parnell, Frank Murkowski and Sarah Palin. He has also received the same recognition by Hawaii’s governor George Ariyoshi.
Earl has opened for or appeared on stage with Johnny Cash, Alabama, Ricky Skaggs, Mark Wills and many others. He has many original songs and has played his music at big events like the Pro Bowl and Hula Bowl.
Long before he was Alaska’s official ‘Ambassador of Country Music’, Earl Hughes was Hawaii’s ‘Ambassador of Country Music’. Playing, not so much on cruise ships, but entertaining cruise ship travelers while they ported, Hughes played for years with big names, including Mac Davis, Charley Pride and the Beach Boys.
“They told me, Earl, go play Hawaiian country music,” Hughes recalled. “I was Don Ho’s steel guitar player, so we were doing ‘Tiny Bubbles’, ‘Lookin’ for Love in All the Wrong Places’ because ‘Urban Cowboy’ was big then. Then Alaska (cruise lines) hired me because nobody could play at the level I was at on steel guitar.”
A triple-threat, armed with expertise on the banjo, the fiddle and the pedal steel, skills he picked up as a young child as part of his father Bernie Hughes’ band, which performed on the 1950s TV show ‘Saturday Night Jamboree”, Hughes transitioned easily to summer tourism seasons in Alaska.
In Alaska, he’s played with the likes of Alabama, Ricky Skaggs and Johnny Cash during his stay here in the 1980s.