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Songwriter Rick Norcross Announces Retirement

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EAST HARDWICK – Singer, songwriter, band leader and third generation Hardwick Academy graduate Rick Norcross is retiring from the music business after 60 years as a performing artist.

His retirement was announced simultaneously with the release of “The Bestest Songs I Ever Wrote,” on the Billy Bowles “Swinging Country” radio show on KSSL-FM Radio in Texas, Saturday, Aug. 10. Norcorss says it is the final Rick &The All-Star Ramblers album.

Before cutting this final CD, Norcross invited his fans to vote for their favorite Ramblers songs. The 15 top songs were compiled and rereleased on this album. “This is my gift to you, our loyal Ramblers fans, for your longtime friendship and support of our many Vermont tours and concerts,” said Norcross.  

According to a press release from Airflyte Records, “Rick Norcross has left the stage. After more than 60 years as a singer, songwriter, band leader and recording artist, Rick Norcross, who began his music career in 1963 in the tiny Northeast Kingdom village of East Hardwick, Vermont, is getting done. The release of ‘The Bestest Songs I Ever Wrote’ marks his 13th album on the Airflyte Records label and his final record project of all.”

courtesy photo East Hardwick native Rick Norcross appears on the cover of his latest album, “The Bestest Songs I Ever Wrote.”

Norcross began playing the guitar while in high school when his next door neighbor, Harold Patch of Pleasant Street in East Hardwick, gave him a few lessons and let him work off the price of a guitar. 

His first-ever production was in 1962 when he came up with the idea of an event as part of the Tulip Festival called “Hootenanny at Hardwick.” This folk music show on the stage of the Hardwick Academy gym featured Norcross, Cathy Hancock, Barbara Smith, Tom Azarian from Cabot and Bud Boydston from Walden. According to Norcross “It was good fun and we had quite a crowd.”

After leaving Hardwick, Norcross attended Florida Southern College (FSC). Just weeks after arriving at FSC, he won the “Hootenanny Contest” at the Polk Theater in downtown Lakeland, Florida. Within another year, he opened The Other Room, a coffeehouse near the FSC campus.

After playing folk clubs in England in 1965, Norcross returned to Florida to study journalism at the University of South Florida. He was soon covering the music scene for The Tampa Times during Tampa’s Golden Age of Music from 1969 to 1974. 

During this time Norcross interviewed and photographed Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Johnny Cash, the Byrds, Leon Russell, Merle Haggard, Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and hundreds of others. His collection of black and white photographs can be seen at The Whitewater Gallery in East Hardwick and found online at presspasstampa.com.  

Never forgetting his roots, in 2009, the Hardwick Town House needed new steps and numerous people and organizations pitched in money to replace the concrete steps with local Woodbury granite. Rick and the Ramblers played a benefit show and contributed about $1,200 towards those steps.

In late 1972, he briefly returned as the editor of the Hardwick Gazette. According to Norcross “I lasted a couple of months as the owner was not paying bills and I didn’t want to bring my wife up from Florida if the job was on shaky grounds.”

Always willing to help out in his hometown, Norcross played in the Grange at the first fundraiser for the East Hardwick Neighborhood Organization, giving that group the first deposit into their bank account.

Although he lived in Burlington, Norcross drove the Ramblers’ bright green 1957 Flxible Starliner touring bus, affectionately known as “The Mighty Pickle,” in Hardwick’s Spring Festival parades each year until he sold it in 2019.  That sale led to an original song titled “God Bless the Mighty Pickle” and a CD with the same name, released in October of 2023. 

Rick and The All Star Ramblers always considered themselves a Vermont Band, but they achieved national and international recognition. The Norcross-penned song “You Can’t Make It Up,” about the junior prom at Hardwick Academy, was selected in 2015 as “Western Swing Song of the Year” by The Academy of Western Artists in Gene Autry, Okla.

A little-known fact is that Norcross wrote one additional song about Hardwick titled “Tainted Money.” It was about the Hardwick Electric Department embezzlement and according to Norcross “It was not well received and I had to take it off the second edition of the ‘Welcome to Our Vermont’ CD.”

Although Norcross is retiring, his music is still popular. In July, “God Bless The Mighty Pickle” was listed at the No. 2 position on the “Indy Express Top 20 Picks of the Month,” and No. 6 on the “10 Most Played Western Swing Albums” in Western Way Magazine. Norcross himself is currently listed in the No. 4 slot for the fourth month in a row on the “List of the Top 10 Famous Singers from Vermont.”

According to the press release Norcross can count more than 1,000 shows and has been singing his Vermont songs for over 60 years. He has toured England four times, including an eight-month residency in London. In addition he has performed in Canada, Ireland, The Netherlands and recently in Spain, playing a 10 day tour of British Folk Clubs in Murcia.

He headlined Vermont Day at the Eastern States Exposition, “The Big E,” for six years and was elected to the Big E Board of Trustees in 2019. He has played 59 concerts in the Vermont State Parks system and appeared at virtually every county fair and field days in northern and central Vermont.

He was a featured performer at nine WOKO Hot Country Music Festivals and performed at 21 First Night New Year’s Eve Celebrations in Burlington. On Rick’s 50th birthday, Mayor Peter Clavelle declared March 23rd “Rick Norcross Day” in Burlington and in 2009, Burlington Mayor Bob Kiss dubbed March “Rick Norcross & The Green Mountain Chew Chew Food & Music Festival Month.”

In 2010, noted Vermont author Stephen Russell Payne wrote the biography, “Riding My Guitar – The Rick Norcross Story.” And in 2019 his “I Love Western Swing” was adopted as the theme song for the “Fort Worth Birthplace of Western Swing Music Festival” in Texas.

In his retirement message, Norcross stated “I want to say a huge thank you to my band, the absolutely stellar Ramblers, our family of sponsors, our loyal Ramblers audiences, all the radio DJs who have become dear friends over the years, Lane Gibson, who recorded and engineered all our albums since 2008 at his Lane Gibson Recording and Catering Studios in Charlotte, Vt. Thank You all from the bottom of my heart for your longtime support and for granting me the honor of playing music for all these wonderful years. It has been a wild ride! So long and be well.”

“The Bestest Songs I Ever Wrote,” is available on-line at rickandtheallstarramblers.com with individual digital song downloads at i2irecords.com. Or listen on-line on Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify and others.

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