Horses and bluegrass music
Arthur Hancock III’s two pursuits
PARIS, KY.
“We’re farmers,” says Arthur Hancock III. “We breed and raise thoroughbreds.”
He grew up on Claiborne Farm amid the rolling hills of Bourbon County. His grandfather, Arthur Boyd Hancock Sr., founded the farm in the early 1900s and passed it on to his son, Arthur “Bull” Hancock, who guided Arthur III in learning to work with horses.
But to his father’s chagrin, Arthur took to playing bluegrass music with a passion.
Those pursuits, horses and music, competed inside him, and he excelled at both. He would, in time, breed and raise champion horses. And he also wrote songs recorded by Willie Nelson, Ray Price, Grandpa Jones and Bobby Osborne. A YouTube video shows him singing Good Hearted Woman with Waylon Jennings.
Add to that his overcoming volatile struggles with alcohol, and there are stories to tell—and tell them he does in his recently published memoir, Dark Horses: A Memoir of Redemption (Stone Publishing, $38).
On the farm, Arthur absorbed his equine lessons. In summers, he’d visit his grandmother in Nashville, where she had second row seats at the Grand Ole Opry. Arthur recalls seeing Hank Williams perform “no more than 20 feet in front of me.” He saw Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys and many others. “The whole thing was wonderful,” he says. He found inspiration to learn the guitar.
Father and son, Arthur Hancock IV, on left, and Arthur Hancock III at the Stoney Point Jamboree at Stone Farm. Photo: Bobby Shiflet/Frames on Main
In Nashville, he auditioned original songs for legendary music agent Fred Foster, who helped launch the careers of Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison and Kris Kristofferson. Foster signed him to a four-record deal. When Arthur became disillusioned with the music business, he pivoted back to the world of horses.
But instead of succeeding his father to run Claiborne Farm, Arthur paved his own path and, in the 1970s, he and his wife, Staci, purchased 100 acres of rich Bluegrass land near Paris and founded Stone Farm, which has grown to 2,300 acres—powered by Clark Energy Cooperative.
The farm has produced numerous champion thoroughbreds, including three Kentucky Derby winners. All the while, he continued playing music. In the early 2000s, Arthur returned to the music studio and recorded two bluegrass/country albums, Sunday Silence and Time. On occasion, he joins the music making in private jamborees at the farm.
CAMPBELL WOOD is a freelance writer and a retired clown who entertained for over 40 years across Kentucky as Cambo the Clown.
