Country Singer and Musician. He is best remembered for his biggest Country hit "Abilene" (1963) that spent four weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's country singles chart. Born George Hege Hamilton IV, he began performing in the late 1950s as a teen idol and while a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina he recorded his first single "A Rose and a Baby Ruth" (1956) for Colonial Records that made it to No. 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 Chart. In 1959 he moved with his family to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a career in Country music. The following year he became a member of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and began recording for RCA Records. His breakthrough Country song was "Before this Day Ends" (1961), followed by "Abilene" (1963) and "Fort Worth, Dallas, or Houston" (1964). By then his music began to reveal a folk influence, with "Steel Rail Blues" (1966, by Gordon Lightfoot), "Early Morning Rain" (1966, also by Gordon Lightfoot), and "Urge for Going" (1967, by Joni Mitchell). His last Top 5 single came in 1970, with "She's a Little Bit Country." Upon the decline of his American chart success in the early 1970s, he started touring the world, across the Soviet Union, Poland, Australia, the Middle East and East Asia, earning him the nickname "The International Ambassador of Country Music." During this time he hosted several successful television programs in the England and Canada, and in the 1990s he played himself in the musical "Patsy" at London, England's West End theatre, based on the life of Patsy Cline. In 2004 he recorded an acoustic gospel album entitled "On a Blue Ridge Sunday" which earned him a Dove Award nomination in the Best Bluegrass Album of the Year category by the members of the Gospel Music Association. A single from the album, "Little Mountain Church House", won nominee recognition in the "Best Bluegrass Recorded Song" category the following year. In 2007 he collaborated with Live Issue, a group from Northern Ireland, to record a live album based on the life of Joseph Scriven, who wrote the hymn "What a Friend We Have in Jesus." They also toured together again in 2009 and that same year, he released a parody of his classic hit "Abilene" in the height of the soaring US gas prices called "Gasoline". He was also a regular participant in the Country's Family Reunion video series. In 2010 Lamon Records released his album "Old Fashioned Hymns" and he was joined on the 28-track collection by a number of musical guests, including Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, Gail Davies, Pat Boone, Del McCoury, Bill Anderson, Connie Smith, Tommy Cash, Cliff Barrows, George Beverly Shea and many others. During his over 50-year musical career, he released 35 albums and over 60 singles. He died following a heart attack at the age of 77. In 2012 he was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.