Cowboy Church is a long standing tradition at the Williams Lake Stampede.
This Sunday’s service taking place July 2 starting at 8 a.m. in the Stampede Grandstand will include singing and a talk with famed Grand Ole Opry entertainer Harry Rusk.
The service is sponsored by Cariboo Christian Outreach and local Williams Lake churches with Pastor John Noble acting as master of ceremonies and Bruce Wilcox and Maggie Weins leading the congregational singing.
Harry Rusk rose to international fame the hard way. He survived tuberculosis when several of his close family members lost the battle with the disease and despite opposition from some friends and family who didn’t think he would make it in the tough music business.
Rusk was born in Fort Nelson while his family was on a summer pack horse trip to pick up supplies for their trapping business.
His father died when Harry was almost seven. His mother continued trapping for another two years before moving the family in to Fort Nelson so that he could attend school.
He ended up attending school for all of 23 months.
After tuberculosis he was confined to the Charles Camsell Tuberculosis Hospital in Edmonton from 1949 to 1953.
Hank Snow visited the hospital and talked with Rusk, giving him the inspiration to set his sights on becoming a country singer and guitarist.
While he was in hospital his mother used her sewing money to buy him a guitar.
Playing around Vancouver and Edmonton Rusk worked hard to build his musical career and eventually appeared on television shows around the country including CTV’s Country Music Hall of Fame and CBC’s Don Messer show.
Rusk met Hank Snow again when Snow played in Calgary. It was an auspicious meeting that resulted in an invitation from Snow to perform at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville with Snow’s Rainbow Ranch Boys. Rusk ended up playing at the Grand Ole Opry from 1972 to 1994.
He has recorded more than 55 albums and sold more than two million records.
He is still getting royalty cheques for two of the songs that he co-wrote The Redman and The Train and Leavin Footprints in the Snow recorded at Joe Kozak’s Project 70 Studio in May 1974.
A guitar instrumental that Rusk recorded with the Rainbow Ranch Boys was up for album of the year in 2015.
Rusk has been accompanied by his wife Gladys since 1990 and started recording with The Rainbow Ranch Boys in 1991.
Over the years he has been the recipient of many awards. This September he will receive The Living Legends Award by the National Traditional Country Music Association and Hall of Fame.
His music has taken him across Canada and the US and around the world to countries all over Europe as well as Cuba and Mexico.